Igor Sergeyevich Ivanov (Russian, Игорь Сергеевич Иванов) became Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1998, succeeding Yevgeny Primakov. He was born on September 23, 1945 in Moscow.

He is the son of a Russian father and a Georgian mother. In 1969 he graduated at the Maurice Thorez Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages. He joined the Soviet Foreign Ministry in 1973 and spent a decade in Spain. He returned to the Soviet Union in 1983. In 1991 he became the ambassador in Madrid. He was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs on September 11, 1998.

As Russian foreign minister, Ivanov was an opponent of NATO's action in Yugoslavia, calling the Russian peacekeeping mission in Kosovo a mistake. He was also an opponent of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Ivanov played a key role in mediating a deal between Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze and opposition parties during Georgia's "Rose Revolution" in 2003.

Ivanov was succeeded to the post of foreign minister by Sergey Lavrov in 2004.

References

• Personal data sheet: Igor Ivanov [1]
• "Igor Ivanov", TIME magazine, September 13, 1999; [2]
• Bridget Kendall interview with Ivanov, BBC, March 5, 2003; [3], comments