Arab diplomatic sources tell Ahram Online that Mustafa El-Fiqi could encounter opposition by members against the idea of a non-serving minister being nominated for the League's top job By nominating a candidate from outside of the realms of current government, Egypt has set in motion the possibility of a new reality in Arab politics. So far Mutafa El-Fiqi is running against prominent Qatari diplomat Abdel-Rahman Al-Attiyah, former secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council. "Qatar nominated Al-Attiyah to establish a new political fact that Egypt is no longer in monopoly of the post," said a Cairo-based Gulf diplomat. According to the same diplomat, had Cairo nominated its foreign minister then Doha could have been persuaded to withdraw its candidate. "Now this is quite unlikely," he added. Other Cairo-based diplomatic sources say that is hard to envisage Arab states wanting to vote for a Qatari candidate. "Al-Attiyah is a prominent diplomat with many good contacts across the Arab world but still not so many Arab countries are willing yet to see a Qatari secretary-general for the Arab League," said one. According to another, the fact that Egypt is not nominating a minister, especially not a foreign minister to the job, might "encourage" other Arab countries to put forward their own candidates. Egyptian diplomats say that Nabil El-Arabi, Egypt's current foreign minister, requested to be excluded from the Egyptian nomination while his predecessor, Ahmed Abul-Gheit, is closely associated in the eyes of many with the regime of toppled president Hosni Mubarak. "El-Fiqi also served closely with Mubarak and he was a member of the ruling party (that was chaired by Mubarak) but he always managed to present himself as a rather independent thinker," said an Egyptian official. "El-Fiqi really wants this job and he can lobby his contacts across the Arab world to get it". The nomination of El-Fiqi to the post that will become vacant on 15 May as the current Secretary-General Amr Moussa ends his second term is the second to be made by Egypt in less than two months. The first nomination was former parliamentary affairs minister Moufid Shehab, but his candidacy was withdrawn after wide public resentment. Shehab is widely perceived as "the tailor" who fixed made-to-measure legislations that were supposedly meant to allow for Gamal Mubarak, the younger son of the former president, to succeed his father to power. Arab diplomats who spoke to Ahram Online say that El-Fiqi is not a blocking nomination but rather one that could get enough votes – even if not the traditional consensus. According to the League's charter, any candidate needs two thirds of the votes of the 22 member states to secure the job. Egyptian diplomatic sources say that these votes are almost secured. Traditionally, it is the Arab summit that should vote over the election of the secretary-general of the Arab League. This year the summit was delayed from its third week of March to 11 May. However, Arab diplomatic sources say there may be a further delay due to the political and security situation in Baghdad, the venue of the next summit, and the overall political turbulence across the Arab world. If the summit is delayed, an extra-ordinary meeting for the Arab foreign ministers could convene to vote in a new secretary-general. This, however, is not certain to happen. Egypt, the venue of the League's headquarters, has de facto, even if not de jurie, monopolized its top job. The only time Egypt lost hold of the position was during the years of the Arab boycott of Egypt over its peace treaty with Israel. At the time the job went to Tunis that offered a temporary residence to the headquarters. Before the end of the Mubarak regime, Cairo had exercised pressure over Moussa to run for a third term as the collective Arab candidate because of its awareness that there were no prominent Egyptian candidates to keep the job for Egypt on a strict consensus basis.
