MEA Announces New High Commissioners To Belize & Kiribati

| Updated: 07 April, 2022 11:26 am IST

NEW DELHI: Indian Envoy to Mexico, Pankaj Sharma has been concurrently accredited as the next High Commissioner of India to Central American country Belize, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has said.

Palaniswamy Subramanyan Karthigeyan, Indian High Commissioner to Fiji, has also been concurrently accredited as High Commissioner of India to Kiribati, the Island state in the central Pacific Ocean.

Sharma will run operations from Mexico City. The 1991-batch IFS officer assumed the charge of the mission in Mexico just a month ago in February. Prior to taking up the role, he served as the Ambassador/Permanent Representative of India to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland. His first posting abroad was at the Embassy of India in Moscow, Russia.

Belize, formerly known as British Honduras, is located on the Caribbean Sea with Guatemala on the west and Mexico in the north.

The announcement came days after Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon’s maiden visit to India. Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic together form SICA (Central American Integration System ) to promote regional peace, freedom, democracy and development.

Speaking to The New Indian, CPIM leader Sujan Chakraborty who visited Belize as a part of the Indian delegation on a Commonwealth Parliamentary study on environment in 2007 recalled hospitality of the nation and its cultural link with India.

The new High Commissioner to Kirbati, 2004-batch IFS officer Karthigeyan, who is Indian High Commissioner to Fiji, will continue to operate from Suva, according to the Ministry of External Affairs.

Prior to assuming the role in the South Pacific state, Karthigeyan was the Deputy High Commissioner of India to Australia in Canberra. He served at the High Commission of India in Male, Maldives and Indian Mission in Damascus, Syria and Policy Planning and Research Division of the Ministry of External Relations. In addition to diplomatic service, he also brings working experience from the public sector banking industry and private manufacturing domain.