Associated Press has appointed veteran reporter Patrick Quinn news director Afghanistan and Pakistan and chief of bureau for Afghanistan based in Kabul, the AP reports.

Quinn is currently deputy Middle East regional editor.

Prior to being appointed deputy Middle East editor, he was chief of Southeast Europe news based in Athens.

John Daniszewski, senior managing editor, said: "Patrick Quinn will bring energy, experience and deep news judgment to a complex story that is vitally important to world audiences. The war in Afghanistan and the political developments in Pakistan have repercussions well beyond the two countries' borders, and the AP has been on the front lines of the story continuously — even when the world's attention had shifted to other arenas."

Quinn first joined the AP as a reporter in Athens in 1988. He left to work for a Greek-American newspaper in New York before returning to the AP in 1991. He has reported extensively from the Middle East and Central Asia, including coverage of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and Egypt, and covered the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the conflicts in Albania and wars in Kosovo and Macedonia.