Issue No. 613
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21 - 27 November 2002 Issue No. 613 Home news |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | |||
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Obituary:
A man of peace
Salah Bassiouni (1931-2002)
Ambassador Salah Bassiouni was a member of the team, led by Lutfi El-Kholi, that went to Copenhagen on 30 January 1997 with the intention of creating an Arab-Israeli coalition for peace in the Middle East. This was a voyage into uncharted waters, a political commitment that changed the course of Bassiouni's life, as well as that of Egypt's civil society.
Salah Bassiouni
Bassiouni was one of Egypt's veteran diplomats, a group who started embarked on their career in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Middle East was buffeted by the stormy manifestations of the Cold War and the tidal wave of Nasserism.
The 1970s turned things around. The main focus of Egypt's regional diplomacy shifted from conflict to peace. The shift was too much for many -- but Bassiouni embraced it, along with many who were insiders to Egyptian policy making during the 1967 crisis and war.
Bassiouni did not start out as a career diplomat. From 1952-56 he worked with the Prosecutor General's office, before switching to the diplomatic corps. His career picked up in 1959, when he became Egypt's first chargé d'affaires to serve in London after the Suez War. He also became Egypt's first chargé d'affaires to Paris in 1963. Back in Cairo, Bassiouni founded the Diplomatic Institute in 1966. He served as the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) representative at the UN's Geneva headquarters in 1972. He also served as Egypt's ambassador to Ethiopia in 1975, to Hungary in 1977, and to the Soviet Union in 1984.
After the end of his term in Moscow, Bassiouni did something unusual. He resigned from the diplomatic corps, started a private law practice and became actively involved in civil society. He helped establish the National Centre for Middle East Studies, wrote regularly for the press, and became a familiar figure in Egypt's public life.
Another major change in Bassiouni's life came with his joining the Egyptian peace movement, which sought to rally support for a just peace in the Middle East, on the basis of exchanging land for peace and establishing an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
This was when I got to know Bassiouni on a personal level, and came to appreciate his dedication to the cause of peace. The peace movement soon came under assault in the press, as well as on the screens of newly created satellite TV stations, with radicals seemingly hell- bent on tearing it apart. Bassiouni was undaunted. He went on to establish the Cairo Peace Society -- an organisation that to this day is a target of slander and political and legal wrangling.
The death of Lutfi El-Kholi, the most prominent member of the Egyptian peace movement, made things harder for Bassiouni. It fell to him to carry peace advocacy torch at a very difficult time. Radical winds had blown away much of the fresh hope Oslo had brought forth, and the process of liberating Arab land was falling apart. In light of the barbaric acts committed by Israel's right wing government, Arab and Egyptian public opinion became disenchanted with the prospects of political coexistence.
Bassiouni's faith remained unshaken, for he was certain that an alternative to the violence and destruction that extremists on both sides of the political divide were fomenting must be found. He did not live long enough to prove his adversaries wrong, and the torch of peace he left behind glows dimmer than ever before.
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