Hidajet Biščević

Who is Hidajet Biščević?

Hidajet Biščević is a Croatian diplomat, currently holding the office of the Secretary General of the Regional Cooperation Council. He is also a journalist and an author of several books on international relations, concerning the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Iranian Revolution and the Iran–Iraq War.

Biščević graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Zagreb. After working at the state-owned Vjesnik daily newspaper in the 1980s and early 1990s Biščević joined the Croatian diplomatic service in 1992, and was initially named Head of Department for Asian and Arab Countries at the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Adviser to the Foreign Minister.

From 1993 to 1995 Biščević was Croatia's ambassador to Turkey, after which he was appointed as Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs, before serving as ambassador to the Russia. Upon returning from Moscow, he served as the State Secretary for Political Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2003 to 2007. On 10 May 2007 at the Southeast European Cooperation Process Foreign Ministers summit in Zagreb he was appointed to be the first Secretary General of the newly established Regional Cooperation Council, and his term officially began on 1 January 2008.