US President nominates Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti as country’s Ambassador to India: White House
Washington, Jul 10 : US President Joe Biden on Friday nominated Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti as Ambassador to India, the White House said.
If he gets Senate confirmation, then the 50-year-old Garcetti will succeed Kenneth Juster, who was the US envoy in New Delhi till January 2021.
Eric M Garcetti has been the Mayor of the City of Los Angeles since 2013, following 12 years as a member of the City Council, including six as Council President. As Mayor, Garcetti oversees 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, the White House said in a statement.
Garcetti co-founded Climate Mayors and led more than 400 U.S. mayors to adopt the Paris Climate agreement. He is the current Chair of C40 Cities – a network of 97 of the world’s biggest cities taking bold climate action and has led the organization’s engagement and expansion in India as well as C40’s global response to the COVID pandemic through the sharing of best practices and resources, it added.
During 12 years as an Intelligence Officer in the US Navy Reserve Component, Garcetti served under the Commander, US Pacific Fleet and the Defense Intelligence Agency, retiring in 2017 as a Lieutenant.
A Rhodes Scholar, he studied at Queen’s College, Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Garcetti was selected as an inaugural Asia 21 Fellow of the Asia Society, and 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. He is the founding Chair of the Latino Alliance of Mayors at the US Conference of Mayors, serves on the Board of National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, and speaks fluent Spanish. Garcetti earned a B.A. and M.A. at Columbia University, where he was a John Jay Scholar.
Mr Garcetti, in a statement, said that he was honored to accept the President’s nomination.
“Today, the President announced that I am his nominee to serve as US Ambassador to India. I am honored to accept his nomination to serve in this role,” he wrote on the official twitter account of the Los Angeles Mayor.
“I have committed my life to service –– as an activist, as a teacher, as a naval officer, as a public servant, and if confirmed, next as an ambassador. Part of that commitment means that when your nation calls, you answer that call,” Mr Garcetti said in another tweet.
Besides, Denise Campbell Bauer and Peter D. Haas were also nominated as Ambassadors to Monaco and Bangladesh, respectively.
While Bernadette M. Meehan was nominated as Ambassador to Chile.
UNI
