President Hosni Mubarak led the funeral procession of former Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Maher yesterday, who died Monday morning aged 75. Al-Rashdan mosque in Nasr City hosted the funeral ceremony. Secretary-general of the Arab League Amr Moussa attended the ceremony, along with parliamentary members and a number of UN and EU ambassadors and representatives. The foreign ministry delivered a statement yesterday mourning the deceased and lauding his career and nationalism. Maher was born on 14 September 1935. He obtained his law bachelor's degree from Cairo University in 1956. Maher started his career as a diplomatic attache. He was later promoted to ambassador and was stationed at Egyptian embassies in Kinshasa, Paris, Zurich, Portugal, Moscow, Washington, Lisbon and Brussels. His most outstanding position was in Belgium, where he gained accreditation with the European Economic Community (EEC). Maher was also part of the Camp David talks in 1978, where he was assigned to coordinate effort with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He also attended the 1988 talks that delivered Taba back to Egyptian control after Israel occupied the town in 1967. In May 2001 Maher became the fourth figure to occupy the position of foreign minister during Hosni Mubarak's presidential tenure, ranking 74th in the line of Egyptian foreign ministers. Confusion surrounded Maher's nomination to the post since his brother, Ali, then Egypt's ambassador in Paris, was announced by the state-run TV to be the new minister. But the news was later corrected, and Ahmed Maher was declared the successor to former foreign minister Amr Moussa. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
