Kunwar Natwar Singh, former Indian diplomat and also politician who served as the Minister of External Affairs from May 2004 to December 2005 was born 16 May 1931.
Natwar Singh started his career in Indian foreign services in 1953. He served there for 31 years. His first assignment was in Beijing, China and then he got an opportunity to work for India in New York. He was also India's representative to the executive board of UNICEF (1962–66). He was also part of UN committees between 1963 and 1966. In 1966, he became India's Ambassador to Poland from 1971 to 1973 and India's Deputy High Commissioner to U.K. from 1973 to 1977 and India's Ambassador to Pakistan from 1980 to 1982.
He served as an Executive Trustee in the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and was appointed by the Secretary-General for six years. He also served in the Expert Group of the Commonwealth, London in 1982.
He was honored with the third highest civilian award,the Padma Bhushan in 1984.
In 1984, he resigned from the Indian Foreign Service, and joined the Congress party. He fought an election and was elected to the 8th Lok Sabha from Bharatpur constituency in Rajasthan. In 1985, he became a minister of state and allotted the portfolios of steel, coal and mines, and agriculture. In 1986, he became minister of state for external affairs.
In 1989he lost election from the Mathura constituency of Uttar Pradesh. The Congress party returned to power after the elections of 1991, with P.V. Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister but Singh could not become a MP or minister. He was considered as a loyalist to Sonia Gandhi. He left the party along with N.D. Tiwari and Arjun Singh, to form a new political party, All India Indira Congress. After P.V. Narasimha Rao lost the election and Sonia Gandhi had regained control of the party, he merged their new party into the Congress party and again came back to Congress.
In 2004 Congress came back to power under the regime of Manmohan Singh, he became a foreign minister in 2004. But he had to resign within a very short period of time i.e. within 18 months due to accusation against him by UN's Volcker committee in illegal pay-offs in the Iraqi oil scam.
