New spokesman for UNFICYP

JOSE Luis Diaz, a United Nations official with extensive experience in media liaison with the world body, has been appointed as spokesman of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP).
An UNFICYP statement said Diaz, who is from the Dominican Republic, was coming to Cyprus from Geneva, where he served as spokesman for United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour and her Office.

He has also been based in Cambodia and South Africa, working as part of United Nations peacekeeping and electoral operations. Among his public information activities within the United Nations, he worked as spokesperson of an investigative team established by the Secretary-General in 1997 to look into allegations of massive human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He joined the media operation of the UN human rights office in 1998, working since then with former High Commissioners Mary Robinson and the late Sergio Vieira de Mello, as well as with the present United Nations human rights chief.

Before joining the United Nations as information officer in Geneva in 1990, Diaz worked in the United States for publications including The Nation magazine and the New York-based Guardian Newsweekly.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.