A senior official of the Government of India is expected in the country at a head of an 18-man delegation. The Indian Minister of State for External Affairs, Dr. Shashi Tharoor will arrive for an official visit and will meet officials of the Liberian government; sources from the Executive Mansion and the Indian Consulate in Liberia have hinted this paper. According to information gathered, Dr. Tharoor will be the first senior official of the Indian Government to visit Liberia in 40 years.

While in the country, the Indian Minster of State for External Affairs is expected to hold talks with Vice President, Joseph N. Boakai , President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and some "selected Cabinet ministers." He will also meet the Indian Community including Indian Peace Keepers with the United Nations Mission in the country. According to information gathered by the INQUIRER, the Liberian Foreign Ministry officials and the Indian leadership in the country yesterday held a meeting to draw up the protocols concerning the up-coming visit of Dr. Tharoor.

The Indian Minister is an author, peace-keeper, refugee worker and a human rights activist. He was India’s candidate to succeed United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006, and finished a close second out of seven contenders. An internationally known speaker and writer on India’s recent socio-economic transformations, Dr. Tharoor’s twelve books and newspaper columns have made him one of India’s best-known voices worldwide.

His UN career began in 1978 at the United Nations where he joined the staff of the United Nations High Commissions for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva.. Over the years, he held various key responsibilities including peace-keeping after the Cold War; Senior Adviser to the Secretary-General, as well as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. Dr Tharoor left the UN on March 30, 2007.

Since then, he has served from (April 2007 – May 2009) as the Chairman of the Dubai-based Afras Ventures, a company that is aimed at promoting socially-relevant investments in India and founded a state-of-the-art training centre in Kerala, Afras Academy for Business Communications (AABC), to develop business communication and presentation skills. Shashi Tharoor is also the award-winning author of twelve books, as well as hundreds of articles. His work has been reviewed in a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, Time and Newsweek. His columns have appeared in The Times of India, The Hindu, The Indian Express and Newsweek International.

His seven non-fiction books are: Reasons of State (1981), a study of Indian foreign-policy making; India: From Midnight to the Millennium (1997), which was cited by President Clinton in his address to the Indian Parliament; Kerala: God’s Own Country (2002), with text by Shashi Tharoor and paintings by the renowned M.F. Husain; Nehru:

Born in London in 1956, Dr Tharoor was educated in India and the United States, completing a PhD in 1978 at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he received the Robert B. Stewart Prize for Best Student. At Fletcher, Shashi Tharoor helped found and was the first Editor of the Fletcher Forum of International Affairs. Dr Tharoor was also awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Puget Sound (USA) and the University of Bucharest, Romania. A compelling and effective speaker, he is fluent in English, French, Malayalam and Hindi.

In January 1998, Dr. Tharoor was named a "Global Leader of Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He is the recipient of several awards, including a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was named to India’s highest honour for Overseas Indians, the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, in 2004. Prior to joining the Government of India, Shashi Tharoor has served on the Board of Overseers of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the board of trustees of the Aspen Institute, the human rights organization Breakthrough and as an International Adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. He assumed office of Minister of State for External Affairs on May 29, 2009.