London - Britain's Foreign Office minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations, Mark Malloch Brown, is to step down from his post at the end of July, he announced Wednesday. Malloch Brown, 53, said he was leaving the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown after two years for personal reasons and had never intended "to do the job forever."
"My decision to step down at the end of July is not in any way a commentary on the political situation," he said.
Malloch Brown was previously the right-hand man of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as whose deputy he served in 2006.
He was in charge of the UN Development programme between 1999 and 2005, and ran the UN response to the Indian tsunami in December, 2004. He joined the UN refugee agency UNHCR in 1979.
In 2006, the career diplomat was strongly criticized by the then US ambassador to the UN when he said the former Bush administration allowed "too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping."
