Ambassador
Born in Messina in 1936 to a family of the Sicilian landed aristocracy, Ferdinando Salleo entered the Italian diplomatic career in 1960, immediately after graduating in law from the University of Rome. He served first in Paris, then as deputy consul general in New York, then in Prague. In 1972 he returned to the United States as an embassy counselor in Washington. He subsequently served as head of the NATO department in the Foreign Minister’s cabinet, from which he moved to Bonn as an embassy counselor. In 1979 he was appointed first deputy director and then (1985) general director of the Department for Development and Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Due to his experience in economic and financial policies he served as Italy’s permanent representative to the OECD and, in 1986, to the European Space Agency (ESA), before returning to Rome as director general of Economic Affairs. From 1989 to 1993 he was Italian ambassador to Moscow, during the Gorbachev era and the collapse of the Soviet Union, succeeding Sergio Romano. He was subsequently appointed director general of Political Affairs, until he reached the highest diplomatic function within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that of Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with Minister Antonio Martino.
During his secretaryship he stipulated an agreement with the United States for the relaunch of the UN mission in Somalia, aimed at achieving peace and he personally led the negotiations between Italy and Slovenia for the solution of the problems between the two States, in order to favor the Ljubljana’s entry into the EU. As his last diplomatic post, he was ambassador to Washington from 1995 to 2003, where he ended his career at the age of 66.
Furthermore, Salleo is the author of a study of diplomatic history on the genesis of the State of Albania (1913-1914), which was published in 2000 by Sellerio Editore and translated into Albanian. He was a contract professor at the University of Florence and a full professor at the Free International University of Social Studies Guido Carli (Luiss) in Rome; he was also a member of numerous boards of directors and, in particular, Vice President of Mediocredito Centrale (Capitalia Banking Group). He collaborates for the foreign policy page of La Repubblica.
From 2015 to 2018 he was vice president of the Italian Group of the Trilateral Commission.