New US Ambassador to SL presents credentials

21 August 2015 11:17 am Views - 5495

New U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives Atul Keshap presented his credentials to President Maithripala Sirisena in a ceremony at the Presidential Secretariat today.  

The ceremony marks the official beginning of Keshap’s tenure as the U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka.  

The US embassy in Colombo said that Ambassador Keshap is a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, and has spent much of his career focusing on South Asia, including Sri Lanka.  

Most recently, he was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs in Washington DC, working closely with a strategic region of almost 1.7 billion people and over $2 trillion in economic output.  His other overseas postings have included work at the U.S. Embassies in New Delhi, India; Rabat, Morocco; and Conakry, Guinea.

Ambassador Keshap has expressed great enthusiasm for his new posting in Sri Lanka.  “I have travelled to Sri Lanka many times in my career, and every time I have been struck by the incredible natural beauty of these islands, and tremendous hospitality and warmth of the people who live there,” he said during his official swearing in ceremony in Washington D.C. on August 9.