The Diplomat
US President Joe Biden has appointed Benjamin Ziff, who was Minister-Counsellor at the US Embassy in Madrid and between August and December 2017 acted as Chargé d’Affaires until the arrival of Ambassador Richard Duke Buchan, as the new head of the US Mission in Havana.
Ziff, who before arriving in Madrid had been responsible for Public Diplomacy affairs at the Secretary of State’s Office and was in charge of the Nordic and Baltic countries in Europe.
After leaving his post at the Embassy in Spain in 2021, Ziff was director of the Migration Working Group of the State Department’s Bureau of the Western Hemisphere, responsible for coordinating hemispheric migration policy and strategy.
Benjamin Ziff arrives in the Cuban capital as Chargé d’Affaires, since the Senate has not approved sending any US ambassador to the island, despite the fact that bilateral diplomatic relations were normalised seven years ago.
