Arab League chooses another Egyptian as new secretary general at turbulent time

Foreign Minister Nabil Al Arabi of Egypt was elected as the new secretary general of the Arab League on Sunday after last minute diplomacy left him as the only candidate in the race.

Shortly before the vote, Egypt replaced its original candidate Mustafa el-Fiqqi, who was a member of ousted president Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party.

Qatar had nominated Abdul Rahman Bin Hamad al-Attiyah, who served as the head of the Gulf Cooperation Council. With both Mr. Fiqqi and Mr. Attiyah lacking consensus, their candidacies were withdrawn and the 76-year-old Mr. Arabi was nominated as a sole runner for the post.

The choice for head of the Arab League traditionally is agreed in advance, but this year, Egypt and Qatar both nominated candidates.

Mr. Elaraby, nominated shortly before foreign ministers were due to meet in Cairo on Sunday, will take over from Amr Moussa, another former Egyptian foreign minister who led the 22-nation Cairo-based body for 10 years. Mr. Moussa is expected to contest the Egyptian presidential election in September.

Egypt, which is home to Arab League headquarters, has traditionally tried to give the top post to one of its diplomats. Since its founding in 1945, the League has had six secretaries general, all but one of them Egyptian. Only when Egypt was boycotted by other Arab members for its 1979 peace deal with Israel did a diplomat from another country—Chedli Klibi of Tunisia—get the job.

The pan-Arab organization is an umbrella group of countries in the region and tries to reach consensus on political and social issues. It has observer status at the United Nations and recently joined a number of countries in urging the UN Security Council to impose the no-fly zone on Libya. The total population of the League’s 22 members is 360 million.

Although the Arab League often has been more a place for disagreement than for action, many activists are hoping the League will play a more active role in coordinating Arab policies and pushing for reform following the uprisings in the region.

“For Egypt to sacrifice its foreign minister is sending a message that it is keen on keeping the Arab League alive at a time when the political circumstances in the region may weaken it,” Hassan Abou Taleb of Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo told Reuters.
“This is the toughest assignment I will have,” Mr. Elaraby said in an acceptance speech. He did not add that the new job would carry a salary many times that of his old job.

Mr. Elaraby was Egypt’s UN representative in the 1990s and served as a judge on the International Court of Justice between 2001 and 2006. He was a legal adviser to Egypt’s Foreign Ministry during the Camp David peace negotiations with Israel that led to the peace treaty; he also participated in the negotiations to end the dispute with Israel over Taba, which ended in arbitration that turned the area over to Egypt.

An arbitration expert, Mr. Elaraby was critical of the Mubarak government’s crackdown against the uprising and was a member of a committee to advise protest leaders on their demands for reform.

(Mustapha Ajbaili, an editor at Al Arabiya