Updated

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed a veteran United Nations diplomat from Slovakia to head the United Nations political mission in Iraq.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Tuesday that Jan Kubis, who served as the top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan from 2012 to 2014, brings years of experience in diplomacy, foreign security policy, and international economic relations both internationally and in his native Slovakia to his new post.

Kubis, a former foreign minister of Slovakia who served as secretary-general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe from 1999 to 2005, will replace Nikolay Mladenov, who is about to take up the post of the U.N.'s top Mideast envoy.