Martin Nesirky leaving top UN job to return to Vienna

The move is for family reasons, Ban told journalists at the daily briefing at UN headquarters in New York.

“He wakes up even much earlier than I do – much, much earlier – just to make sure that I am fully briefed on what has happened while we were sleeping. So I have really enjoyed and appreciated his providing me, early in the morning, with all the fresh news and developments of the situation around the world, so that I can be fully aware of what has happened so that I could be able to answer whenever I was approached by you. It must have been quite difficult for him, but I have really benefited a lot from his hard work.

“He has been at my side during an especially tumultuous period in world affairs.

“Throughout that time he has been a model spokesperson of the United Nations: accessible, authoritative, cool under pressure, fast on his feet and quick with a joke.

“He has appeared before you almost every day at noontime to take your slings and arrows.

“The job is one in which few notice when you succeed. The scrutiny has been always intense, the spotlight as bright as it gets. 

“Martin Nesirky has showed his mettle day in and day out.  He has functioned at the top of the craft.”

Ban said that sometimes Nesirky addressed him “straight – face to face – and advised me something which I always accepted and which turned out to be always correct. I really appreciate that.”

Nesirky is a former London World Desk editor, bureau chief and correspondent, who served with Reuters in Moscow, Berlin, The Hague and Seoul. Prior to his appointment to speak for the UN secretary general in 2009 he was spokesman and head of press and public information from 2006 at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna. He will remain in New York until 7 March and soon afterwards take on a new assignment in the UN office in Vienna. ■