Indian American gets key Pentagon job

Washington, May 2 (IANS) Indian American security expert Vikram J. Singh has been appointed to the key post of deputy assistant secretary of defence for South and Southeast Asia at the Pentagon.

Singh, who previously served as special assistant in the office of the under secretary of defence (Policy), has also been appointed to the senior executive service, a defence department announcement said.

He replaces Robert Scher, who has been assigned as deputy assistant secretary of defence for plans.

In his previous job Singh worked on policy issues, including stability operations and counter-insurgency capabilities; disaster response and humanitarian assistance; oversight of peacekeeping missions; and the 2006 Quadrennial Defence Review.

Singh alse served as senior defence advisor to the late Richard Holbrooke, the special US Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Before joining Holbrooke's staff, he was senior director for counter-insurgency policy at the Pentagon and a member of the Department of Defence team for the White House Strategy Review for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Singh returned to government service in February 2009 after two years as a fellow at the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS), a Washington think tank.

At CNAS he worked on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Asia policy issues, and a range of defence strategy and planning projects.

From 1999 through 2001, Vikram managed a five-country Ford Foundation project on minority rights and security in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Colombo.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)