Luigi R. Einaudi was elected to a five year term as Assistant Secretary General in June 2000 at the 30th regular session of the OAS General Assembly, held in Windsor, Canada. He served as Acting Secretary General from October 16, 2004 upon the resignation of Secretary General Miguel Angel Rodríguez until May 26, 2005 when Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza assumed Office.

As Assistant Secretary General, Ambassador Einaudi served as Secretary to the political bodies and carried out diplomatic efforts to reduce tensions in several countries. He helped broker talks related to the maritime and territorial differences in Central America – between Belize and Guatemala, as well as Honduras and Nicaragua – and has supported demarcation of the El Salvador-Honduras border. He has also worked tirelessly to find a solution to the political crisis in Haiti.

From 1995 to 1998, Ambassador Einaudi was the United States Special Envoy in the peace talks that led to a comprehensive settlement by Ecuador and Peru of their centuries-old territorial conflict. In December 1999, when tensions over maritime boundaries broke out between Honduras and Nicaragua, Einaudi was called on to help promote dialogue. As Special Representative of the OAS Secretary General, he successfully brokered a separation of the countries’ military forces pending a decision on the boundary dispute by the International Court of Justice.

Ambassador Einaudi retired from the U.S. Department of State in July 1997 after serving on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff (1974-1977 and 1993-1997), as Director of Policy Planning for the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs (1977-89), and as U.S. Ambassador to the OAS (1989-1993). In his quarter century with the State Department, he played a major role in articulating policy and consulting with almost every Latin American nation, as well as Japan, most Western European nations and NATO, on a range of matters including the Panama Canal treaties, human rights issues, the Caribbean Basin Initiative and the Central American and Haitian crises.

Ambassador Einaudi received awards from Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, as well as Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. He also received the 1997 Frasure Award for peace-making and seven other medal citations from the Departments of State and Defense. In February 1999 the presidents of Ecuador and Peru personally decorated Ambassador Einaudi for his role in bringing peace to their countries.

Luigi Einaudi earned A.B. (1957) and Ph.D. (1966) degrees at Harvard University. From 1964 to 1974, he conducted research in the social sciences at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. He has taught at Harvard, Wesleyan, UCLA and Georgetown universities, and lectured widely in the United States, Latin America and Europe. He has written dozens of articles and monographs and was the principal author of Beyond Cuba, Latin America Takes Charge of Its Future (1974). He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is on the board of educational and non-profit institutions in the United States and Italy.