Veteran diplomat Shivshankar Menon, who had served as foreign secretary till last July, has been appointed as the next National Security Advisor (NSA).
Menon,60, succeeds M K Narayanan, who has been appointed as the governor of West Bengal.
Menon will serve in the rank of Minister of State till further orders, according to a decision of the Appointments Committee of Cabinet. Menon superseded 17 officers senior to be appointed to the post of foreign secretary in 2006 when his predecessor Shyam Saran retired.
He was India’s envoy to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and China.
As a middle-level officer in Vienna and later as a representative of the Ministry of External Affairs in the Department of Atomic Energy, Menon mastered the complex proliferation issues, knowledge he put to full use while negotiating the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement.