Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov (Russian: Серге́й Ви́кторович Лавро́в, born 21 March 1950) is a Russian diplomat who has been the Foreign Minister of Russia since 2004. His nomination to the Foreign Minister office were approved by two Russian presidents: (in 2008 by Medvedev, and in 2012 by Putin).

Prior to that, Lavrov was a Soviet diplomat and Russia's ambassador to the United Nations from 1994 to 2004. Lavrov speaks Russian, English, French and Sinhala.

Lavrov was born in Moscow to an Armenian father from Tbilisi and Russian mother from Georgia. He graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in 1972. Lavrov was sent as a Soviet diplomat to Sri Lanka, where he worked until 1976. He then returned to Moscow and worked in the Department of International Organizations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In 1981, he was sent as a senior adviser to the Soviet mission at the United Nations in New York City, and worked there until 1988. He worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until 1994, when he returned to work in the United Nations, this time as the Permanent Representative of Russia. While in the latter position, he was President of the United Nations Security Council in December 1995, June 1997, July 1998, October 1999, December 2000, April 2002, and June 2003.

Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. (born January 5, 1942) is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993. He has also co-anchored CBS This Morning since January 2012. Rose, along with Lara Logan, has hosted the revived CBS classic Person to Person, a news program during which celebrities are interviewed in their homes, originally hosted from 1953 to 1961 by Edward R. Murrow.

Rose was born in Henderson, North Carolina, the only child of Margaret Frazier and Charles Peete Rose, Sr., tobacco farmers who owned a country store. As a child, Rose lived above his parents' store in Henderson and helped out with the family business from age seven. Rose admitted in a Fresh Dialogues interview that as a child his insatiable curiosity was constantly getting him in trouble. A high school basketball star, Rose entered Duke University intending to pursue a degree with a pre-med track, but an internship in the office of Democratic North Carolina Senator B. Everett Jordan got him interested in politics. Rose graduated in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in history. At Duke, he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity. He earned a Juris Doctor from the Duke University School of Law in 1968. He met his wife, Mary (née King), while attending Duke.

Fareed Rafiq Zakaria ( /fəˈriːd zəˈkɑriə/; Konkani/Hindi: फ़रीद राफ़िक़ ज़कारिया, Urdu: فرید رفیق زکریا; born January 20, 1964) is an Indian-American journalist and author. From 2000 to 2010, he was a columnist for Newsweek and editor of Newsweek International. In 2010 he became editor-at-large of Time magazine. He is also the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, and a frequent commentator and author about issues related to international relations, trade and American foreign policy.

In 2010, the government of India honored him with the Padma Bhushan for his contribution towards journalism.

Zakaria was born in Mumbai (then Bombay), Maharashtra, India, to a Konkani Muslim family. His father, Rafiq Zakaria, was a politician associated with the Indian National Congress and an Islamic scholar. His mother, Fatima Zakaria, was for a time the editor of the Sunday Times of India.

Zakaria attended the Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University, where he was president of the Yale Political Union, editor-in-chief of the Yale Political Monthly, a member of the Scroll and Key society, and a member of the Party of the Right. He later earned a Doctor of Philosophy in political science from Harvard University in 1993, where he studied under Samuel P. Huntington and Stanley Hoffmann, as well as international relations theorist Robert Keohane.

John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior United States Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to then President George W. Bush.

The son of an Army Air Corps serviceman, Kerry was born in Aurora, Colorado. He attended boarding school in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and went on to graduate from Yale University class of 1966, where he majored in political science. He enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1966 and, during 1968-1969, served a four-month tour of duty in South Vietnam as officer-in-charge (OIC) of a Swift Boat. For that service he was awarded several combat medals that include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in which he served as a nationally recognized spokesperson and as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war. During that period, he appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs where he deemed United States war policy in Vietnam to be the cause of "war crimes".

Walid al Muallem (Arabic: وليد المعلم‎) (born 13 January 1941) is a Syrian diplomat who has served in the government of Syria as Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2006. Previously he was Ambassador of Syria to the United States from 1990 to 2000.

After serving as Syria's Ambassador to the United States from 1990 to 2000, Muallem was Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs on 11 February 2006 during a cabinet reshuffle in which his predecessor Farouk al-Sharaa became Vice-President. He has been very involved in Israeli-Syrian negotiations, both before and during his tenure as foreign minister. He currently resides in Damascus. In August 2011, the US sanctioned Muallem together with other Syrian officials in response to Syria's crackdown against anti-government protesters.