CAIRO, January 13, 2010/African Press Organization (APO)/ -- The Change of Command Ceremony for the Liaison Office to Cairo (LOC), United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) will be held on 13 January 2010 at the World Trade Center in Cairo. The current Chief, Lieutenant Colonel Tyra Harding (United States Army) will relinquish command to Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Beyeler (Swiss Army).

UNTSO was established in May 1948 to assist the United Nations Mediator and the Truce Commission in supervising the observance of the truce in Palestine. UNTSO performs various tasks entrusted to it by the Security Council, including the supervision of the General Armistice Agreements of 1949 and the observation of the ceasefire in the Suez Canal area and the Golan Heights following the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967. At present, UNTSO assists and cooperates with the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) on the Golan Heights in the Israel-Syria sector and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in the Israel-Lebanon sector. UNTSO maintains liaison offices in Beirut, Damascus and Ismailia.

The Liaison Office to Cairo (LOC) remains in Egypt at the request of the Egyptian government and operates under the command of UNTSO Headquarters. The area of responsibility includes Cairo and the Sinai Peninsula from Taba to Sharm El Sheikh. The mission of the liaison office in Ismailia is to represent and sustain a visible UNTSO presence in Egypt, through liaison meetings with Egyptian government organizations; embassies of Armistice parties, UN permanent member countries, UN troop contributing countries; and UN offices located in Cairo on behalf of UNTSO Chief of Staff / Head of Mission (COS / HOM). The military observers are unarmed and carry out their tasks under the principle of impartiality. They operate with the consent of the parties and are dependent on the cooperation of the parties for their effectiveness.

Lieutenant Colonel Tyra Harding is a Reserve Officer serving with the United States Military Observer Group-Washington in Rosslyn, Virginia. She has served in various logistics and operations assignments around the world for the past 17 years. In 2004 she deployed to Kuwait as an Operations Officer with the 377th Theater Support Command in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. From 2006-2008 she served at the Pentagon as an Operations Officer in the Army Operations Center and as the Executive Officer for the Deputy Director Current Operations in the Army G3. Following her Change of Command, Lieutenant Colonel Harding will be transferred to the UNTSO Headquarters to serve as the J4, Logistics Officer.

Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Beyeler is an active Reserve Staff Officer at the Swiss Army Headquarters, Armed Forces Joint Staff in the Operation Branch. He has been directly involved over the last 12 years in Peace Keeping Operations and Humanitarian Assistance in the Southern Balkans, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Central Asia. As a Military Observer he served in 1998 in the United Nations Observer Mission in Tajikistan (UNMOT). From 1999 until 2001 he was the Commander of the National Support Element for KFOR/NATO in Kosovo. In 2005 he served as Staff Officer at the HQ of the European Union in the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM) in Banda Aceh / Indonesia. In 2007 he was the Chief Logistics in the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN). Before the assignment to UNTSO he worked for the last 6 months as a Swiss Expert for UNHCR in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. He remains a Delegate of ICRC on the Law of Armed Conflicts.

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© Press Release 2010