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BUENOS AIRES: Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana resigned on Friday over "irreconcilable differences" with President Cristina Kirchner's administration, officials said.
Kirchner's cabinet chief Anibal Fernandez told reporters the Argentine ambassador to the United States, Hector Timerman, was appointed as the South American nation's new chief diplomat.
Taiana submitted his resignation in a letter to the presidency's Secretary of Legal and Technical Affairs Carlos Zannini, who linked the decision to "irreconcilable differences" with the Kirchner administration's handling of foreign policy matters.
But Fernandez insisted the top diplomat had resigned for "strictly personal reasons."
The resignation ended Taiana's five-year tenure at the helm of Argentine foreign policy, since he was first sworn in during the administration of Kirchner's husband, former president Nestor Kirchner, replacing Rafael Bielsa.
The resigning minister is considered a Peronist. His father, Jorge Alberto Taiana, was a personal physician attending to three-time president Juan Peron and a minister of education during Peron's third term.
A sociologist by profession and a political and human rights activist since his youth, Taiana was arrested during the dark years of Argentina's military dictatorship and spent three years (1975-1982) in prison.
He was recently declared a victim in a trial about the dictatorship's crimes against humanity.
- AFP/de
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