His Excellency Jan Matthysen, Belgian ambassador to the United States, will discuss “Belgian-U.S. Relations” Wednesday, March 30, at noon in 238 Herald R. Clark Building at Brigham Young University.
Matthysen was appointed ambassador in 2009, having previously served as ambassador in Bangkok to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Burma and in Ankara to Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. His previous diplomatic career included service as the acting head of the General Directorate for Political-Military Affairs and as senior adviser on Kosovo to the U.N. Secretary General's Special Representative for the Balkans, head of the NATO desk at the headquarters of the Foreign Ministry in Brussels, and chargé d'affaires and later ambassador in Belgrade.
After joining the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1984, he became first secretary at the Belgian Embassy in Bonn and then counselor at the embassy in East Berlin, a position he held through the German reunification in 1990.
This lecture is hosted by the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies and will be archived at kennedy.byu.edu/archive. For more information, contact Lee Simons at (801) 422-2652 or lee_simons@byu.edu.
Writer: Mel Gardner
