Friday, September 1 2006 11:30 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Shiv Shankar Menon, highly-regarded Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, was today appointed as the new Foreign Secretary in succession toShyam Saran who was named Special Envoy for negotiations relating to the Indo-US deal.

The 57-year-old Menon supersedes 14 senior IFS officers and will have a tenure of about three years starting October one after Saran retires.

A 1972-batch IFS officer, Menon, who flew back to Islamabad this afternoon after meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and others during the past few days, was India's envoy to China before being posted to Pakistan three years ago. He has also served in Japan, Israel, Austria and Sri Lanka.

Saran, another brilliant diplomat, has been closely involved with the Indo-US nuclear deal and will continue to handle it most likely till the end of this year by which time it would be through the US Congress. He is expected to get another important assignment thereafter.

Among the IFS officers Menon supersedes are Shashi U. Tripathi, Secretary (West) and Rajiv Sikri, Secretary (East), both 1970-batch IFS officers.

Others senior to him are T C A Rangachari, Atish Sinha, P S Haer and Arun Kumar, all from the 1970 batch, Veena Sikri, S S Mukherjee, Navrekha Sharma, Amitabh Tripathi and Parthasarathy Ray, all belonging to the 1971 batch.