Louis F. O’Neill will take the post of Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova over from William Hill on July 21. According to the OSCE Mission’s press service, Ambassador Louis F. O’Neill graduated with a B.A. in Slavic Languages and Literature from Stanford University, USA,  in 1990 and received a Master’s Degree in Russian and East European Studies from Stanford in 1992. He earned a Juris Doctor degree from the Harvard Law School in 1996. From 1992-1993 he worked at The Moscow Times newspaper as a journalist and designer.

Upon completing law school in 1996, Ambassador O’Neill joined the Harvard Institute for International Development as Project Associate for a Legal Reform Project in Moscow, Russia. He helped draft market-based laws and regulations for the Russian Duma and Federal Securities Commission.

From 2001-2004, Ambassador O’Neill worked as an Assistant District Attorney at the Special Prosecutions Bureau of the New York County District Attorney’s Office.

In 2004 he became a White House Fellow. In that capacity, he served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of State and was assigned to the Office of Russian Affairs. He was tasked, among other things, with issues related to counter-terrorism and law-enforcement co-operation, legal and appellate issues. Ambassador O’Neill also handled special projects for the Secretary of State, one of which was an assignment as U.S. expert to the OSCE Minsk Group’s Fact Finding Mission to the Occupied Territories of Azerbaijan Surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh.

In 2005 Ambassador O’Neill joined the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. State Department and was responsible for long-term U.S. policy towards Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and the Caucasus.

Ambassador O’Neill is fluent in Russian, conversant in Spanish and also speaks some Romanian.

His appointment as Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova takes effect on 21 July 2006.  // Reporter.MD


Publication date: 21 July 2006   

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