Biografia

Claudio Pacifico, Italian diplomat, writer and essayist, was born in Rome in 1947. He obtained the Classical High School Diploma at the Liceo Ennio Quirino Visconti Lyceum in Rome (1965) and graduated in Law, with the highest grade of 110 cum laude, at the La Sapienza University of Rome (1971). He specialized in international disciplines studying at Johns Hopkins University, University of Baltimore, Bologna Center (1971-1972) and at Winston Churchill College in Cambridge, University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom (1972). He attended courses for the Research Doctorate (PhD) in Law at the La Sapienza University of Rome and the preparation course for a diplomatic career (1973-1974). Subsequently, he attended a postgraduate summer course at Harvard University in Cambridge, Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States (1981). In 1974, he joined the Italian diplomatic service, where he served until his retirement on January, 1st 2013.

In his long career, Ambassador Pacifico carried out his diplomatic service in places of particular importance for Italian interests (starting with the Embassy of Italy in Washington) and also on the front line in contexts of real danger, sometimes in theaters of war, such as the Iran upon the Iranian Revolution; Somalia during tribal and civil war; Sudan, at the time of Bin Laden's refuge there and thus the target of American bombs; Colonel Mouammar Gaddafi's Libya, or even the Bangladesh in times of cyclones and the worst pandemics; and finally Egypt of the Tahrir Square Revolution, the epicenter and symbol of the so-called Arab Springs, where he was strongly committed to the protection of our compatriots and the important interests of Italian companies until the end of his career.

As a young man, he worked with some of the great Italian ambassadors of the second half of the 20th century, including Vittorio Cordero di Montezemolo, Luigi Vittorio Ferraris, Francesco Paolo Fulci, Rinaldo Petrignani, Luigi Cottafavi, Bruno Bottai, Boris Biancheri, Sergio Romano, Umberto La Rocca, Ferdinando Salleo, Luigi Guidobono Cavalchini, Umberto Vattani, Giorgio Giacomelli, Patrizio Schmidlin, Amedeo De Franchis, Arduino Fornara, and Sergio Kociancich. Throughout his career, he collaborated with all the great Italian statesmen of his time, from Prime Ministers Bettino Craxi and Giulio Andreotti, to President Sandro Pertini and Prime Ministers Aldo Moro, Emilio Colombo, President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and Prime Minister Francesco Cossiga, up to younger Prime Ministers such as Lamberto Dini, Romano Prodi, Silvio Berlusconi, Presidents Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Giorgio Napolitano, and Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema.

He knew many international leaders, including Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, and Ayatollah Khomeini; great American presidents like Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama; prominent Arab leaders such as Yasser Arafat, King Hussein of Jordan, President Hafez al-Assad of Syria; the Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Benjamin Netanyahu; Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh; Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri; Colonel Muammar Gaddafi; Egyptian Presidents Hosni Mubarak, Mohamed Morsi, and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; Presidents of Sudan Omar al-Bashir and Hassan al-Turabi; historical leaders of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, Nabil Elaraby, and Ahmed Aboul Gheit; influential African leaders, including Somali Presidents Mohamed Siad Barre, Ali Mahdi, Mohamed Farah Aidid, Hussein Farah Aidid, and Abdiqasim Salad; Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi; Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki; Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni; Rwandan President Paul Kagame; Congolese Presidents Laurent Kabila and Joseph Kabila; Kenyan Presidents Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi; and South African President Nelson Mandela. He also interacted with United Nations Secretaries-General Ban Ki-moon, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and Kofi Annan. His connections extended to Asian political leaders like Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Narendra Modi, and President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam; Emperor Akihito of Japan and Prime Ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe; Chinese Presidents Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping; King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand; the last King of Afghanistan Mohammed Zahir Shah and President Hamid Karzai; Presidents of Pakistan Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, Pervez Musharraf, and Benazir Bhutto; President of Bangladesh Shahabuddin Ahmed and Prime Ministers Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina; President of Sri Lanka Chandrika Bandaranaike; Korean Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun; and Philippine Presidents Ferdinand Marcos and Corazon Aquino, and former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos.

His first foreign posting was at the Italian Embassy in Tehran, where, as Consul of Italy in Iran, he successfully organised the evacuation of his compatriots and other European citizens during the Iranian Revolution (1978-1979). He received two Solemn Commendations for the evacuation operations.

On July 19, 1979, he was transferred to the Italian Embassy in Washington, where he remained until June 1983. On June 17, 1983, he returned to Rome to the headquarters of the Italian Foreign Ministry. He took up service first as Deputy Head of Office for the Middle East, then as Head of Office for Asia in the Directorate for Development Cooperation. From June 1984 to February 1987, he was Head of the Secretariat of Undersecretary Bruno Corti, with responsibility for the Mediterranean and the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

On February 14, 1987, he was sent to the Italian Embassy in Mogadishu as First Counsellor of the Embassy, effectively the Number Two or Deputy Ambassador. In this capacity, during the Somali civil war (1990-1991), he led a contingent of Carabinieri from the Tuscania Battalion in rescue operations for civilian populations, including compatriots and numerous civilians of various nationalities. In recognition of these actions, he was awarded two gold and four silver medals for Civil Valour. The honourable mention emphasised that the Carabinieri contingent, led by the First Counsellor of the Embassy of Italy in Mogadishu, Claudio Pacifico, performed acts of great humanitarian value with a sense of self-denial and disregard for danger. For this conduct, he was later appointed 'Meritorious Member' of the National Carabinieri Association.

Again, in recognition of his service in Somalia, in 1991, he was appointed, for the first time, Ambassador of Italy in Dhaka, Bangladesh, at the time the youngest Ambassador in the entire Italian diplomatic network. He assumed his duties on August 23, 1991. On May 2, 1995, he returned to Rome, to the Farnesina (Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), as Director of the Middle East Office in the Directorate General for Political Affairs.