Sahabzada Yaqub Ali Khan (born 1920) was the International Face of Pakistan for many years. He served as foreign minister of Pakistan from 1982 to 1987 and from 1988 to 1991 during the closing years of the Cold War, and was again foreign minister from 1996 to 1997. He was a central player in the UN negotiations to end the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan.
He was later Pakistan's UN Representative. He also served as the UN's point man in negotiating an end to the Civil War in Nicaragua.
Sahabzada Yaqub Khan is a member of the erstwhile royal Afghan Pashtun Rohilla family of Rampur, India. Sahabzada Yaqub Khan enjoyed a distinguished career in the Pakistani Army that began before Pakistani independence. Rising to the rank Lieutenant General, Yaqub Khan served as Chief of General Staff, Commander Eastern Command, and briefly after the resignation of Admiral S.M. Ahsan, Governor of East Pakistan.
On retiring from the Army he embarked on a career as a diplomat, serving as Ambassador to France, the USA and Soviet Union from 1972-82. Since 1982 he served as Foreign Minister under seven different governments. From 1992 until 1997 Yaqub Khan was the United Nations Secretary General's Special Representative for the Western Sahara. He is the founding chairman of the Aga Khan University Board of Trustees, which he chaired for almost two decades until his retirement in 2001. He was a commissioner in the now retired Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict.
