Two new diplomats in Cuba and Djibouti
(BRUSSELS2) Two new diplomats - a Belgian and a Frenchman - will be able to add a European badge to their duties. They have just been appointed, one to take charge of the European embassy in Cuba, the other in Djibouti.
A writer in Cuba
In Cuba, it is Herman Portocarero, currently Belgian Consul General in New York. Prior who is appointed. A country he knows for having been in office from 1995 to 1999. Born in Antwerp in 1952, after studying law, he started out as a lawyer. He entered the diplomatic career with a first post in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), then Jamaica (1985-1989) and a first stint in New York at the Belgian representation to the United Nations. He then took a break to work with Doctors Without Borders in Sudan and Nicaragua. Back in Brussels, he worked at the United Nations office in the ministry, responsible for monitoring sanctions (1990-1992). A post he would occupy again from 2000 to 2003, before returning to Kingston, as ambassador to Jamaica and to the Caricom countries (2004-2008).
Portocarero has another string to its bow. Like his few diplomats, with an alert pen, he has published more than twenty novels and an essay (Geo-graffiti in 1992). His first opus "the combination of Karachi" was published in 1979. But it is especially with the second "Het anagram van de wereld" (L'Anagramme du monde) that he signed his entry into Flemish literature. A very short novel, set "in the closed world of a brothel set in an unspecified town, whose rather sultry atmosphere gives the impression of an almost mythical environment", critics calling it a major contemporary author from Flanders, with a touch of magical realism (read the critical by Karel Osstyn) or post-modernist. In 2006, he received the Hercule Poirot Prize for his novel "New Yorkse nachten" (New York nights), followed by Haitiaanse Nachten.
A regular in crisis areas in Djibouti
In Djibouti, Joseph Silva will only have one arm of the sea to cross. Since he was previously stationed in Yemen. Joseph is a specialist in difficult areas, he was Deputy Ambassador to Lebanon from 2005 to 2009 (including the evacuation of many foreigners during the Israeli offensive and the outbreak of UNIFIL II) and in Côte d'Ivoire ( 1997-2001).
Although the post in Djibouti is relatively small, its proximity to Somalia, at the confluence of the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden, while the local government is engaged in the fight against piracy, makes it a strategic post. . Two PeSDC missions - EUNAVFOR Atalanta and EUCAP Nestor - are based there.
Listen to his analysis of the Arab Spring and the situation in Yemen (listen to here, or MP4 file at download)
