OUP CORRECTED PROOF - FINAL, 12/9/2014, SPi
About the Editors
TERJE RO@D-LARSEN
Terje Red-Larsen became the President of the International Peace Institute (IPI) in 2005. IPI is an independent, international not-for-profit think tank headquartered in New York, with regional offices in Vienna and Manama. IPI is dedicated to the prevention and settlement of conflict. The UN Secretary-General is the honorary chair of the board of the International Peace Institute. Concurrently, Terje Red-Larsen is a UN Under-Secretary-General. He serves as a Special Envoy of the Secretary- General.
Terje Red-Larsen began his career as an academic, studying history, philosophy, public administration, and sociology. He taught Sociology, Political Science, and Philosophy at the Universities of Bergen and Oslo, before establishing the Fafo Institute for Applied Sciences in Oslo in 1981.
As Director of Fafo, he initiated a research project into the living conditions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The relationships with both Palestinians and Israelis that he established during the period of preparing and implementing this project led to a request by the PLO in 1992 that he help establish a secret channel for negotiations between the PLO and the Government of Israel. Those negotiations concluded with the Oslo Accords and the signing of the Declaration of Principles at the White House on 13 September 1993.
In 1993, Mr Rod-Larsen was appointed Ambassador and Special Adviser for the Middle East Peace process to the Norwegian Foreign Minister. In mid-1994, he was appointed United Nations Under-Secretary-General, Special Coordinator for Gaza and the West Bank. In 1996, he was appointed Norwegian Cabinet Minister for Planning and Cooperation.
In 1999, he moved back to the UN as Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and Personal Representative of the Secretary-General to the Palestine Liber- ation Organization and the Palestinian Authority at the level of Under-Secretary- General, a post he held until December 2004. In this capacity he negotiated the Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon in 2000 and established the UN line of withdrawal, the “Blue Line’.
On 14 December 2004, he was appointed by the Secretary-General as his Special Envoy for the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559, on Lebanon and Syria. In this capacity he negotiated the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon in 2005. He also represented the UN Secretary-General in the cease-fire negotiations during the 2006 war in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel.
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