Punjab-origin Atul Keshap is new US envoy to Sri Lanka
Friday, 07/08/2015
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WASHINGTON: Indian-American Atul Keshap has been confirmed as the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives, becoming the second Punjab-origin diplomat to be posted to the region after Richard Rahul Verma.
Keshap, 44, a former official at the US Embassy in India, was on Wednesday confirmed by the US senate as the country’s envoy which would be his first ambassadorial posting. At present, he is working as the deputy assistant secretary of state in the South and Central Asian Affairs Bureau of State Department. He joined the foreign service in 1994.
Keshap and Verma, the US envoy to India, both trace their origin to Punjab. He was the deputy political counsellor at the US Embassy in New Delhi from 2005 to 2008. Keshap also served as special assistant for the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia for the under secretary of state for political affairs.
In 2003, he moved to the White House as director for North African and Middle Eastern regional affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. He was also the director for UN Human Rights in the Bureau of International Organisation Affairs from 2008 to 2010. FAMILY BACKGROUND
His father, Keshap Chander Sen, who was from Punjab, was a UN development economist working in Nigeria where Keshap was born in June 1971. His mother, Zoe Calvert, had been in the US foreign service when she met and married Sen in London. She had also served at the US embassy in India.
“My parents’ service and my upbringing instilled in me a firm dedication and commitment to American values, and led me to a career in the foreign service,” Keshap said in his confirmation hearing on June 23.
LANKA, MALDIVES TIES
He had said since January, Sri Lanka has made progress on challenging issues, from fighting corruption and media censorship, to beginning the long process of healing after decades of war.
