Welcome to Louis O'Neill

Louis O'Neill graduated from New York's and went on to study at Stanford and Harvard. He lived and worked for a number of years in Moscow, including for a year as a Presidential Fulbright Scholar. After four years in private practice, Mr. O'Neill joined the New York County DA's office where he prosecuted numerous cases, some very high profile, involving fraud and other so-called "white-collar" crime.

In 2004, Louis O'Neill was selected out of hundreds of applicants to spend a year as a White House Fellow in Washington . He was assigned as Special Assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell and served on the Russia Desk. After his fellowship was complete, Mr. O'Neill joined the ranks of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, an internal think-tank which examines matters relating to long term U.S. foreign policy.

Louis O'Neill's exceptional experience in with Russia and Eastern Europe, law and diplomacy and combating crime served him well in the position he took in 2006 as the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe’s (OSCE) Ambassador and Head of Mission to Moldova. The mandate of the OSCE is to provide security on human, politico-military, and environmental-economic issues. Louis O'Neill’s experiences prior to his appointment Ambassador prepared him well for this challenging and contentious job.

The hurdles faced by this small, former Soviet state are numerous and complicated. Led by one of only two democratically elected Communist governments in the world, Moldova has been plying a course towards admission to the European Union for several years. The first of any former Soviet states to join the Council of Europe in 1995, Moldova has gone on to become a member of The United Nations, the OSCE, the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Francophonie and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Since becoming the OSCE Ambassador to Moldova, Louis O'Neill has worked hard to restart negotiations with the breakaway region of Transnistria. These efforts paid off in October 2007 when the 5+2 format (Russia, Ukraine, OSCE, US, EU, Moldova and Transnistria) convened in Odessa for a meeting. In addition, Louis O'Neill has worked for fair elections, freedom of expression and assembly, the prevention of trafficking in humans and the prevention of torture in all of Moldovan.

PRESS RELEASES

CHISINAU, 18 June 2007

Moldova OSCE Mission Head condemns forced closure of Corjova polling station

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