The Iran Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki invites the future US administration to reach out to the Middle East and accept his country’s nuclear program. Ambassador Frank G. Wisner, Vice Chairman of External Affairs at the American International Group moderates this conversation with the Iran Foreign Minister on finding a new approach to their troubled relationship. Mr. Mottaki discusses his belief that the new president must improve foreign policy, including in the Middle East. This event was held at the Asia Society.
Manouchehr Mottaki was born in Bandar Gaz in the northern province of Golestan, in 1953. He got his BA from India's University of Bangalore in 1976 in the field of social sciences and received his MA from Tehran University in 1996 in the field of international relations. Mottaki has a good command of English as well as Urdu and Turkish languages. He already served as member of parliament in the first Majlis, head of seventh political bureau of Foreign Ministry (1984), Iran's ambassador to Turkey (1985), Foreign Ministry's secretary general for West European affairs (1989), deputy foreign minister for international affairs (1989) and deputy foreign minister for legal, consular and parliamentary affairs (1992). He has also been Iran's ambassador to Japan (1994), advisor to foreign minister (1999), deputy head of Culture and Islamic Communications Organization (2001) and Head of foreign relations committee of 7th Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission.
Frank George Wisner II (born 1938) is an American businessman and former diplomat. He is the son of Frank Wisner. Wisner is currently Vice Chairman of American International Group. He retired from this post as of February 13, 2009, according to an internal AIG memo issued by Edward Liddy, CEO. Wisner was born in New York on 2 July 1938, and graduated from Princeton University in 1961. He joined the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer in December of that year. In 1976, at the beginning of the Carter administration, he served under Cyrus Vance as Deputy Executive Secretary of the Department of State. He was United States Ambassador to Zambia, 1979-82; Egypt, 1986-91; Philippines, 1991-92; India, 1994-97. After retiring from government service in 1997, Wisner joined the board at a subsidiary of Enron, the former energy company. He is also on the board of Hakluyt & Company, a British corporate investigation firm. Wisner is an Advisory Board member for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the National Security Network, and on the board of Refugees International.[1] Wisner is married to Christine de Ganay (former wife of Pal Sarkozy and former stepmother of French president Nicolas Sarkozy), and they have four children. Currently Wisner is the special envoy of the US in the Troika group for the negotiations on the future status of Kosovo.