Esala Weerakoon Appointed as Secretary General of SAARC

Senior Secretary to the President Asala Weerakoon has been appointed as the 14th Secretary-General of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The appointment will take effect from March 1, 2020, the Ministry said.

Weerakoon’s appointment as the new Secretary-General of the SAARC was approved at the unofficial meeting of the SAARC Council of Ministers in New York last week and will be appointed accordingly, the External Affairs Ministry said.

The meeting was chaired by Nepali Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Giaoli, Foreign Affairs Minister of Afghanistan Salahuddin Rabbani, Bhutan Foreign Minister Dr Thandi Dorjee, Indian Foreign Minister Dr Subramaniam Jayashankar, Maldives Foreign Affairs Minister Abdullah Shahid Khan, Qureshi, State Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh H. ṣāriyār Alam and Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary Ravinath also the occasion.

Addressing the unofficial meeting of the SAARC Council of Ministers in New York on the 26th of the UN General Assembly’s 74th session, Foreign Secretary Ravinatha Aryasinha accepted the approval of the new Secretary-General of SAARC. He said he would.

The Foreign Secretary briefed the President of the SAARC Council of Ministers, the Nepal Foreign Minister and the Association about the challenges and the progress made by the SAARC Secretariat. He thanked Mr. Siel. The South Asian Regional Cooperation Organization’s Cultural Center organizes a number of participatory and non-participatory activities with member states, with the objective of promoting and protecting South Asia’s valuable cultural heritage in order to strengthen relations between member states. Esala Weerakoon, who was appointed as the new Secretary General of the SAARC, has also served as the Secretary to the Ministry of Tourism. He is also the son of former Prime Minister’s Secretary Bradman Weerakoon.

2020 මාර්තු 1වැනිදා සිට ක්‍රියාත්මක වන පරිදි සාක් සංවිධානයේ 14 වැනි මහලේකම් ධූරයට ඇසළ වීරකෝන් මහතා පත් කරනු ලැබ ඇතැයි විදේශ කටයුතු අමාත්‍යාංශය සඳහන් කරයි.

Source – Wijeya Paper