United Nations

  NEW YORK, 21 June (UN Headquarters) -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed Maria-Luisa Chavez as the Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Athens, Greece.  She is expected to take up her duties on 20 June.

 Ms. Chavez, a national of Mexico, currently serves as a Political Affairs Officer with the Office of Outer Space Affairs, Department of Political Affairs, the United Nations Office at Vienna.  She joined the United Nations as an Associate Programme Officer with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in 1981, before moving to the Department of Political and Security Council Affairs, where she served from 1982 to 1992 as a Political Affairs Officer.

 In her current assignment, Ms. Chavez served as Assistant Secretary of the Plenary of the Third United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNISPACE III), in July 1999, and was responsible for the organization, in cooperation with the Government of Romania, of the Regional Preparatory Conference on UNISPACE III for Eastern Europe in January 1999.

 Ms. Chavez has a Master of International Affairs degree from the Columbia University School of International Affairs, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and Spanish literature from Marymount College.