In Algiers, Dina Ezzat examines the agenda of the 2005 Arab Summit and takes stock of 60 years of chequered pan-Arabism, interviewing key contemporary players and profiling past luminaries Since it was founded in 1945 the League of Arab States has had six secretary-generals: Abdel-Rahman Azzam (1945-1952): Born in 1893, at the age of 26 Azzam joined Libyans fighting to free their country from Italian rule. By the age of 31, he opted for a more institutional approach and was elected to the first democratically elected Egyptian parliament in 1924. A few years later he joined the Egyptian diplomatic corps. In 1939 he was appointed to his first high-level official post when he was assigned the portfolio of the Ministry of Social Affairs. In 1945 Azzam was a member of the Egyptian delegation that helped draft the founding Charter of the Arab League. When, on 22 March 1945, the Charter was ratified, Azzam was chosen as the first secretary-general of the pan-Arab organisation. Mohamed Abdel-Khaliq Hassouna (1952-1972): Born in 1898, Hassouna evinced an early interest in politics. In 1925 he was awarded an MA in economics and political science from Cambridge University following which he joined the diplomatic corps. In 1942 he was appointed to the then high-profile post of governor of Alexandria, a job he held for six years before returning to the Foreign Ministry as deputy foreign minister. In 1949 Hassouna entered the cabinet for the first time as minister of social affairs and a year later was reassigned as minister of education. In 1952 he was appointed minister of foreign affairs, a position he held for only a few months before being elected secretary-general of the League of Arab States. Hassouna's term as secretary-general coincided with the presidency of Gamal Abdel-Nasser and encompassed the high-tide of pan-Arabism, with the League of Arab States playing a crucial role in promoting independence movements in Arab countries still under colonial rule. Mahmoud Ryad (1972-1979): Born in 1917 Ryad graduated from the Military Academy in 1936. He went on to become one of the most renowned Arab diplomats of the 20th century. His career spanned crucial phases in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1958 -- as Egypt was recovering from the Tripartite Aggression -- Abdel-Nasser chose Ryad as his political adviser. Then, in 1962, Ryad was chosen by Abdel-Nasser to head the Egyptian mission at the UN, in New York. In 1972 President Anwar El-Sadat re-instated Ryad as presidential political adviser, a position he held for only a short time before being elected, later that same year, secretary-general of the Arab League. Ryad's years at the helm of the pan-Arab organisation included both the zenith of inter-Arab cooperation during the 1973 War, and also one of the most serious rifts in the modern history of the Arab world when El-Sadat made his historic visit to Israel in 1977. In 1979 Ryad lost his job when Arab countries elected to move the headquarters of the League from Cairo to Tunis in protest against Camp David. Al-Shazli Al-Qolibi (1979-1990): Al-Qolibi, the only non-Egyptian secretary-general in the six-decade history of the Arab League, assumed the post when Tunisia became the host of the League. A former university professor and Tunisian minister of information, Al-Qolibi's tenure saw a great deal of criticism levelled at the organisation, especially following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Having assumed the post in exceptional circumstances -- the Arab boycott of Egypt -- Al-Qolibi resigned in equally dramatic times, leaving the organisation following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the failure of the Arab League summit in Cairo to convince Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to pull his troops out of neighbouring Kuwait. Essmat Abdel-Meguid (1991-2001): After a decade of efforts to mend fences with Arab countries President Hosni Mubarak successfully saw the Arab League return to Cairo. Mubarak chose his then foreign minister to be the fifth secretary-general of the Arab League. Abdel-Meguid assumed the post at a crucial point in the history of the Arab world. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the US-led war against Iraq had a disastrous impact on Arab relations. Arab unity was in tatters, and nowhere were the effects of this felt more strongly than in the arena of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Under Abdel-Meguid the Arab League faced a series of pressing issues: Iraq was suffering under suffocating international sanctions; the short-lived hopes of an Arab-Israeli peace turned into a nightmare of Israeli aggression against the Palestinians and Lebanese and Somalia was falling apart. Though Abdel-Meguid ended up being criticised for collective Arab failings the seasoned Egyptian diplomat never lost his calm, even when Baghdad publicly accused him of siding with Kuwait for personal gain. Abdel-Meguid, agree many Arab diplomats, steered the League through treacherous waters with skill. Amr Moussa (2001-present): The 68-year-old Egyptian diplomat first came to the attention of the public in the mid-1990s when he joined President Mubarak on a number of high-level Arab and African meetings. Insiders recall it was during a confrontation between Moussa and a senior Syrian diplomat over Egypt's Arab commitment that Mubarak began to think of Moussa as a possible foreign minister. Moussa joined the diplomatic corps following his graduation from the Faculty of Law at Cairo University in the early 1950s. By May 1991 he had risen through the ranks to assume the post of foreign minister, a position he held for 10 turbulent years. In 2001, as a part of a campaign to enhance the profile of the Arab League, Mubarak nominated his popular foreign minister as the sixth secretary-general of the Arab League. The nomination was unanimously approved at the Amman summit, which charged the new secretary-general with reforming the Arab League. For Moussa reform of the pan-Arab organisation is a make-or-break issue that he has been fighting for -- with little success to report -- during the last four years of his first -- and perhaps only -- five-year term in office. Like his mentor Mahmoud Ryad, Moussa's term in office has encompassed dramatic developments, not least the US invasion of Iraq.
