UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed Nickolay Mladenov of Bulgaria to replace Robert Serry as his special coordinator for the Arab-Israeli peace process, a U.N. spokesman announced Thursday. Mladenov, currently the U.N. envoy in Iraq, is a former Bulgarian foreign minister and defense minister and has worked at the World Bank, spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters at U.N. headquarters. It was not immediately clear who would replace Mladenov as the U.N. envoy to Iraq, U.N. officials and diplomats said. Serry, a longtime Dutch diplomat, held the top U.N. position for Israel and the Palestinian territories for more than eight years.
