UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon named Sigrid Kaag to lead the international joint mission with the chemical weapons watchdog tasked with eliminating Syria’s arsenal, diplomats said.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon named Sigrid Kaag to lead the international joint mission with the chemical weapons watchdog tasked with eliminating Syria's arsenal, diplomats said.

Ban made his appointment of Kaag known in a letter addressed to Azerbaijan's UN envoy Agshin Mehdiyev, who holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council.

The UN Security Council, which is set to vote on Kaag's nomination Wednesday, has formally approved a first joint mission with the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The OPCW and the UN have had a team of 60 experts and support staff in Syria since October 1, destroying Syria's production facilities while the country's civil war rages on.

Kaag, a UN assistant secretary-general working at the UN Development Program, has served since 2007 as the regional director for the Middle East and North Africa with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Amman.

The mission she is set to lead must include about a hundred staff members and be based in Damascus, with a second base in Cyprus.

Kaag is charged with overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile by June 30, in line with a resolution passed by the Security Council last month.
She joined the UN system in 1994 after a stint in the Dutch Foreign Ministry.