Biden Renominates Azerbaijan Ambassador As New Senate Begins

President Joe Biden still wants career diplomat Mark Libby, whose nomination has been stalled for more than half a year, to serve as Ambassador to Azerbaijan, TURAN’s Washington correspondent reports from the White House.

Biden renominated Libby as the new congressional session began Tuesday. He was one of the 85 nominations the White House resubmitted yesterday out of roughly 175 that fell short in the last congressional session.

“The White House will continue transmitting renominations to the Senate in the coming weeks and hopes that the Senate will take action expeditiously,” an administration official told TURAN"s correspondent. More renominations are expected in the coming weeks.

Libby, who currently serves as a State Department Faculty Advisor at the National War College in Washington, D.C, was originally nominated for the Azerbaijan position early last summer (May 25) but he never received a hearing from the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Senator Bob Menendez, known for his strong ties to the U.S. Armenian lobby,

During his career in the Foreign Service, Libby served as Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires ad interim at the U.S. Mission to the European Union in Brussels.Other overseas assignments include tours in Warsaw, Nassau, Nicosia, and Baghdad, where he served as Political Counselor.

His Washington assignments include tours as a watch-stander and later Deputy Director for Crisis Management in the State Department Operations Center; Deputy Director in the Office of Central European Affairs; Director of the Office of Southern European Affairs; and Director of Orientation in the Foreign Service Institute.

Alex Raufoglu

Washington D.C.