WASHINGTON, February 27: An international diplomat who was shortchanged by his own country Sri Lanka has been chosen to head the special team that will inspect sensitive Iraqi sites, under the deal clinched by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.Jayanta Dhanapala, 59, who was till recently Sri Lanka's Ambassador to Washington, has been named commissioner of the special team that will support the UNSCOM inspectors. The selection reportedly has the approval of the United States, which was happy with the way Dhanapala handled the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Extension Conference he chaired.A savvy diplomat, Dhanapala was briefly expected to replace Boutros Boutros Ghali as the UN Secretary General, but his own country was lukewarm to the idea and the US too did not back him wholeheartedly. Despite his international stature, his own popularity among Colombo's diplomatic corps is also suspect.When Sri Lanka recalled him after his tour of duty in Washington, he quit to take up a sabbatical in theUS. Only last month he was named as a UN Under-Secretary General under the Annan regime in the newly created Disarmament Secretariat.His appointment has been widely hailed, partly because the Western powers were happy with the way he brought home the permanent extension of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1995 in the teeth of intrigue and opposition from many countries, including India.Although the US and Britain had initially expressed concern that UNSCOM's authority would be undermined by the appointment of a special team, the naming of Dhanapala has mollified them somewhat.The chairman of the UN Special Commission, Richard Butler, himself welcomed the appointment saying he had known Dhanapala for 30 years every since they studied together in Australia. ``He's also one of the world's best experts in matters of disarmament.it's a fine appointment. I look forward to working with him,'' Butler said, suggesting the two could work ``hand in glove'' instead of at cross purposes as manyfeared.Dhanapala served as Sri Lanka's Ambassador to the United States from January 1995 until April 1997 and was Sri Lanka's Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva from 1984 to 1987. Since August, he has been diplomat-in-residence at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. Between 1965 and 1983, Dhanapala held diplomatic positions in London, Beijing, Washington and New Delhi and was a director of the Non-Aligned Movement during Sri Lanka's chairmanship of the organisation.
