The interview was recorded at New York , on October 16, 1997 . The Interviewer was James Sutterlin. Ismat T. Kittani, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Iraq, today was elected President of the thirty-sixth session of the General Assembly. Prior to being named to his current post, Mr. Kittani was head of the Iraq Foreign Ministry Department of International Organizations and conferences from 1975 to 1980. Mr. Kittani, who was born 5 April 1929 at Madiya, Iraq, received a B.A. degree in political science (international relations) and English from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1951. After a brief period as a high school teacher in Iraq, he joined the Foreign Ministry in July 1352 and served in its United Nations section until 1954. For the next three years, until May 1957, he was Attaché at the Iraqi Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. Mr. Kittani joined the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations in 1957. He was a member of the Iraqi delegation to the Security Council, 1957 to 1958; and served as Alternate Representative on the Council in the second half of 1958. He was a member of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, elected by the General Assembly, from 1959 to 1963. He also represented Iraq in the Assembly's Second Committee (Economic and Financial), 1957 to 1962; the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary), 1559 to 1963; and the Commission on Human Rights, 1958 to 1961. In 1958 and 1959, he was Acting Permanent Representative of Iraq to the United Nations. Following that assignment, hr. Kittani served as Permanent Representative of Iraq to the European Office of the United rations and to other international organizations in Geneva from 1961 to 1964. Mr. Kittani held several senior positions in the United Nations Secretariat following his secondment from the Iraqi Foreign Service in January 1964. In 1973 he was appointed Executive Assistant to the Secretary-General with the rank of Assistant Secretary-General. Other positions he held while with the Secretariat include: Chief of Specialized Agencies and the Administrative Committee on Co-ordination Affair in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Secretary of the Economic and Social Council; Principal Officer and later Director of the Executive Office of the Secretary-General; and Deputy to the Assistant Secretary-General for Inter-Agency Affairs. Other duties performed by Mr. Kittani include: delegate to the World Health Assembly from 1958 to 1963; member of the Governing Body of the International Labour Organisation, 1959; alternate member of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization, 1961; chairman of the World Health Assembly's Committee on Administrative, Finance and Legal Matters, 1963; and member of the Iraqi delegations to the 1959 and 1963 International Labour Conferences. More recently, Mr. Kittani was Rapporteur General of the Fifth Summit Conference of the Non-Aligned Countries held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1976. During the Sixth Summit Conference of the Non-Aligned, which was held in Havana, Cuba in 1979, he was Chairman of the Political Committee. He was President of the Second Review Conference of Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.