Senate confirms envoy to Ukraine (09/17/00)

Senate confirms envoy to Ukraine

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - Carlos Pascual, U.S. ambassador-designate to Ukraine, was confirmed on September 8 by the Senate. Nominated in March, Mr. Pascual and a group of other Clinton administration nominees for diplomatic posts and the executive branch had to wait through the summer while the fate of some of the politically more contentious nominations was sorted out by individual Republican and Democratic senators and the administration.

Attending the Ukrainian Independence Day reception at the Embassy of Ukraine a few days after his confirmation, on September 12, Mr. Pascual said he expected to be sworn in during the first week of October and to leave for Kyiv by mid-October.

A career diplomat, Mr. Pascual has been involved in Ukrainian affairs at the National Security Council since 1995. His last position there was that of special assistant to President Bill Clinton and senior director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian affairs.

Mr. Pascual will be the fourth U.S. ambassador to Ukraine since its independence. He will replace Steven Pifer, who also was selected for the Kyiv assignment from the senior ranks of the NSC. They were preceded by ambassadors Roman Popadiuk, who opened the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine in 1992, and William Green Miller.

Prior to joining the NSC, Mr. Pascual was deputy assistant administrator for Europe and the new independent states at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Born in Havana, Cuba, Mr. Pascual received a B.A. from Stanford University and a master's degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

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