LA Mayor Garcetti named India envoy

Tribune News Service

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New Delhi, July 10

US President Joe Biden announced the nomination of Eric Garcetti as the new Ambassador to India.

Garcetti was named Ambassador barely eight days after US Chargé d’Affaires Atul Keshap took charge at the US embassy here. Garcetti was tipped to be the envoy to India on May 26 when Biden sent a clutch of ambassadorships to the Senate for confirmation.

Mayor of Los Angeles since 2013, Garcetti served for 12 years as an intelligence officer in the US Navy Reserve Component, including a stint with the Pacific Fleet and the Defence Intelligence Agency. His term as Mayor runs out in 2022.

Becoming Mayor after 12 years as a City Council member, Garcetti oversaw the busiest container port in the western hemisphere, the largest municipal utility in the country, and one of the busiest airports in the world. He led LA’s successful bid to return the summer Olympic Games to American soil for the first time in three decades.

He currently chairs LA Metro, the country’s second-busiest transit agency, which is building or extending 15 new transit lines, and shifting to an all-electric fleet, according to a White House brief.

A Rhodes scholar, he studied at Queen’s College, Oxford, and the London School of Economics. He taught at Occidental College’s Department of Diplomacy and World Affairs, as well as at the University of Southern California’s School of International Relations.

He has lived and conducted field work on nationalism, ethnicity, and human rights in Southeast Asia and Northeast Africa.

Garcetti’s nomination was announced with that of Denise Campbell Bauer (France), Peter D Haas (Bangladesh) and Bernadette Meehan (Chile).