Veteran journalist John F Burns, the New York Times’ London Bureau chief, will be the guest speaker at this year’s National Journalism Awards Banquet being hosted by the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) next Friday at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston.

Burns, who has received two Pulitzer prizes for his reporting in 1997 on Afghanistan’s Taliban fighters, and for his coverage of the strife and destruction in Bosnia in 1993, is scheduled to arrive in the island on December 3.

Sandals Resorts, the Jamaica Pegasus and The Gleaner have so far responded to the PAJ’s request for assistance to host Burns during his visit.

Burns, who was appointed the New York Times’ chief foreign correspondent in April 2003, has a wealth of experience in journalism, having worked for more than 30 years on assignment in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.

He reported from South Africa during the last phases of apartheid; China, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s and its subsequent opening to the world under the “open door” policy; the Soviet Union, during one of the harshest periods of the Cold War; the former Yugoslavia, during the wars in the early 1990s in Croatia and Bosnia; Afghanistan, during the period of the Soviet military withdrawal, the rise of the Taliban, and the American-led military campaign that ended Taliban rule there; and Iraq, during the height of Saddam Hussein’s repression, the war that overthrew him, and its aftermath.

In July 1986, Burns was imprisoned by the Chinese Government on charges of espionage. After an investigation, a trial was averted when the Chinese deported him to Hong Kong and subsequently apologised to The Times, stating that the charges had been false and concocted by “bad elements” in the country’s state

security police.

In 1979 and 1997, Burns won the George Polk award for foreign reporting in Africa and Afghanistan. The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, an association of retired US diplomats, awarded Burns the Edward R Weintal Prize for diplomatic reporting in 2005 for his coverage of the war

in Iraq.

In 2003, the Committee to Protect Journalists named him winner of the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award, describing him as “the eyes and ears for much of the American public”.

Before joining The Times, Burns worked for The Toronto Globe and Mail. From 1971 until 1975 he reported on the life and politics of mainland China from his base in Beijing, and from 1969 until 1971, he covered the office of the Canadian prime minister in Ottawa, then Pierre Trudeau, as chief parliamentary correspondent. From 1967 until 1969, Burns was a reporter in Toronto, covering crime, education and local politics. During his summers in college, he worked at The Ottawa Citizen and The Ottawa Journal.