The United Nations has appointed Mr Frank O'Donnell, a native of Dublin, as head of the UN Development Programme's work in Yugoslavia. He arrives in Belgrade today as leader of an advance team set up to address the issues of institutional reform, poverty eradication and public resource management.
Mr O'Donnell was previously in charge of the UNDP project to lay the foundations of public administration for the future state of East Timor. His mission there helped accelerate the formation of the joint UN-Timorese transitional government.
He is a graduate of University College Dublin and has served with UNDP in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and New York for over 25 years. He developed the humanitarian programme of the UN Volunteers in the early 1990s.
In the late 1960s he was a founder-member of the Irish Arab Society and was more recently a contributor to the Government's 1996 White Paper on Foreign Policy.
UNDP supervises the world body's development work, primarily focusing on the elimination of poverty. Ireland has been a member of the UNDP executive board for the past three years and will contribute £3.4 million to the agency this year. UNDP was established in 1965 and its activities extend to over 170 developing countries.
