" served his country for more than 50 years and helped to build peace," said Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former secretary-general of the United Nations and chairman of the National Council of Human Rights. He was paying tribute to the former prime minister who passed away on Saturday, aged 88, following a long illness. President Hosni Mubarak was among the senior officials who attended Khalil's military funeral on Monday, while the People's Assembly observed a minute of silence. "Khalil devoted his life to the service of his country and the entire Arab nation," said People's Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour. Born in Qalioubiya in 1920, Khalil stalked the corridors of politics maintaining a precarious balance between his technocratic approach and the broader considerations of state politics. A key member of the team that forged a peace deal with Israel in the late 1970s, Khalil played an important role in the negotiations that led to the signing of the 1979 peace treaty, the first between Israel and an Arab country. He remained convinced to the end of his life that the Camp David Accords set the most realistic frame of reference for peace negotiations in the Middle East. Khalil accompanied Anwar El-Sadat to Jerusalem in November 1977 on the historic visit that paved the way for the start of the Egyptian- Israeli negotiations sponsored by then US president Jimmy Carter. He was appointed prime minister in 1978 and headed the Egyptian delegation at the Palestinian self-determination talks a year later in his capacity as foreign minister, a post he resigned in May 1980 after talks had reached a deadlock. Following his resignation as prime minister and foreign minister, Khalil was elected chairman of the board of the Arab International Bank. He has been head of the bank's Centre for Studies and Research since 1975, in addition to holding the post of general manager. He trained as an engineer and began his career in the railway department in the late 1940s. In 1951, he gained a PhD from the University of Illinois, returning to Egypt to teach at the Faculty of Engineering at Ain Shams University. His expertise meant that he was often called on by president Gamal Abdel-Nasser to give advice in his capacity as a member of the Transportation Committee of the Production Council. Never an ideologue, his approach was consistently technocratic, yet still he rose to cabinet rank during an era of socialist transformation when political priorities ran high, serving as minister of housing and then of transport. "The socialist central planning philosophy of the 1952 Revolution was supported by technocrats, myself included," he told Al-Ahram Weekly in an interview in 1992. Khalil always believed wide experience was a prerequisite for effective decision-making in public life. A parliamentary deputy for 12 years, he also headed the Higher Council for Journalism, was president of the Engineering Syndicate, and worked as a banking consultant. At various times he was responsible for upgrading university curricula and collecting Suez Canal dues. The author of two important studies on the international policies of oil, he helped set the strategy for the Arab oil boycott during the October 1973 War. Khalil turned down ministerial positions twice in the mid-1960s and 70s and was appointed by Nasser in June 1970 to head the Radio and Television Union and its Council of Trustees. He promulgated a law, modelled on the BBC's charter, aimed at freeing radio and television from government control. Following Nasser's death and the subsequent modification of the law by the new minister of information Mohamed Fayek, Khalil submitted his resignation in April 1971. An advocate of political and economic liberalisation, he foresaw the transformation of Egypt from a one-party to a multi-party system and was appointed by Sadat as secretary-general of the Central Committee of the Arab Socialist Union and head of the Committee for the Future of Political Action in 1976. Khalil participated in drafting the formation of political parties law, which he saw as a way to "enshrine a democratic working process within the party structure as well as regulating its sources of funding and ensuring that parties are not formed on a sectarian basis". Khalil's appointment as prime minister in 1978 signalled a turning point in his career. His relationship with Sadat was not always harmonious -- Khalil had signed a petition opposing the Friendship and Cooperation Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1972. However, he shared "most of Sadat's views, and he gave me the opportunity to realise them. I believed in the peace initiative, and that a military solution would not be acceptable to the superpowers as events on the eleventh day of the 1973 War showed." Khalil was appointed to the Political Bureau of the National Democratic Party (NDP) in February 2002 and elected deputy president of the NDP seven months later. He stepped down in November 2007.
