17 - 23 May 2001
Issue No.534
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 17 - 23 May 2001 Issue No.534 |
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Time will tell
That Amr Moussa would be leaving the Foreign Ministry for the Arab League has been known for some time now. Who his successor would be was only revealed on Tuesday, just one day before Moussa moved down the street to his new job. In between, much ado was made of who the contenders might be, and of the logic of keeping the decision secret until the last moment.Truth be told, Ahmed Maher, the man chosen as the new foreign minister, was not one of the names the rumour-mongers and press made such a fuss about. His brother, Ali, Egypt's ambassador to France, was, as were several other candidates. On Tuesday, in fact, at least two major newspapers, and even Egyptian TV, announced that Ali Maher was the new minister.
Ahmed Maher, however, was the candidate picked by President Hosni Mubarak, the ultimate architect of the country's foreign policy. Maher, a career diplomat who has served as Egypt's ambassador to both Moscow and Washington, is certainly a man qualified to take over as Egypt's top diplomat. Widely respected in diplomatic circles for his even-handed approach to issues, he is likely to find himself being constantly compared to Amr Moussa when it comes to style. Yet when it comes to the deeper issues at stake, both regionally and globally, it will be the substance of Ahmed Maher's work as Egypt's Foreign Minister that will really determine the outcome of any assessment of his performance.
Maher was part of the negotiating team at the Egyptian-Israeli peace accords in Camp David in the late 1970s, and his head of mission posts with two of Egypt's most important allies give him the depth of knowledge and experience necessary to steer the busy ship of Egyptian diplomacy in the right direction.
Commentators are still gauging what effect Maher and Moussa's new posts will have on the institutions they now run, as well as the future of diplomacy in the region. Probably sooner, rather than later, some of the answers to these questions will become very clear.
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