US Names Andrew Schofer New Co-Chair to OSCE Minsk Group

WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. interim co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, Ambassador Richard Hoagland, is retiring on August 28.

Announcing his plans at a roundtable discussion at the Washington Foreign Press Center, Hoagland, currently the State Department’s principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, said he will be replaced by Andrew Schofer, a career foreign service officer who most recently served as charge d’affaires of the U.S. Mission to the International Organizations in Vienna.

“He has experience in the settlement of the Cyprus and other conflicts,” Hoagland said. “I think the Secretary of State and the State Department have chosen a brilliant Co-Chair.”

Hoagland said the new appointment does not indicate a new approach to some of the thorniest issues in the region, particularly Azerbaijan’s autonomous breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.