Rüdiger Lüdeking is a former German diplomat. He joined the Federal Foreign Office in 1980. In many of his assignments his focus was on multilateral affairs, East-West relations, European security and disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation issues. From 1983 to 1985 he was policy officer of the German Delegation to the Mutual Balanced Force Reduction Talks (MBFR) in Vienna and from 1987 to 1990 Deputy Head of the German Delegation to the Conference of Disarmament in Geneva. In 1996 he spent a year at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London. From the beginning of 2000, he held positions first as Director, Conventional Arms Control and later Director, Nuclear Arms Control and Non-Proliferation at the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin before being appointed Ambassador and Deputy Commissioner of the Federal Government for Disarmament and Arms Control in 2005.
In his subsequent assignments, Ambassador Lüdeking served as Permanent Representative to the United Nations and to the other International Organizations in Vienna (2008-12) and as Permanent Representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (2012-15). His other diplomatic appointments abroad include the German embassies in Windhuk (Deputy Head of Mission, 1990-92) and London (Head of Economic Affairs Department, 1996-2000); before retiring in 2018 he served for three years as Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium.
