(CNN) -- Argentina's ambassador to the United States, Hector Timerman, will become the new foreign minister, replacing Jorge Taiana, who resigned Friday, the government said.
Taiana resigned "for strictly personal reasons," said a statement on the Argentine president's website.
Timerman is the son of Jacobo Timerman, the late Argentinean journalist who was detained and tortured during the 1976-83 right-wing dictatorship.
The son fled to the United States in 1978 and received an international relations master's degree from Columbia University in 1981.
He also has worked as a journalist and a human rights activist. He returned to Argentina in 1984.
Jacobo Timerman wrote about his jailing and torture in the book ''Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number." He died in 1999.
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