Profile: Mark Malloch Brown

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Gordon Brown has appointed a former senior UN diplomat as UK minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations.

Sir Mark Malloch Brown, 53, will be made a life peer and attend Cabinet meetings when necessary.

He worked under Kofi Annan as deputy secretary-general of the UN from April to December 2006 and was previously his right-hand man or chef de cabinet.

He was also in charge of the UN Development Programme from July 1999 to August 2005.

During that time he was responsible for the UN response to the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004.

Millennium Goals

In 2006 he was strongly criticised by the US ambassador to the UN when he said that the Bush administration allowed "too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping".

But he refused to apologise for his remarks and Mr Annan stood by him.

During his UN career he helped with the Millennium Development Goals for the developing world, designed to eradicate extreme poverty, cut child mortality, provide universal primary education and promote environmental sustainability by 2015.

He joined the UN refugee agency UNHCR in 1979, running relief operations for Cambodian refugees in Thailand.

In the early 1980s he backed the breakaway Social Democratic Party founded by four former Labour ministers.

He had wanted to stand for them in the 1983 general election, but failed to secure a nomination.

And he spoke at Conservative David Cameron's first party conference in 2006.

A former journalist for The Economist, Lord Malloch Brown was educated at Marlborough, Magdalene College Cambridge and the University of Michigan.

He was knighted in the New Year's Honours list 2007 and has four children with wife Patricia.