CAIRO - Now that the Mubarak regime has been ousted, paving the way for real changes in the country, controversy has arisen over who will follow Amr Moussa, a potential Egyptian presidential contender, as Secretary-General of the Arab League (AL). Once a charismatic and popular foreign minister, this Egyptian veteran diplomat seamlessly shifted to the League's top post where he spent a whole decade before finally deciding that two terms were enough. In the wake of the success of Egypt's January 25 Youth Revolution and the toppling of Mubarak, Moussa, 74, has said he will run in the country's presidential elections due later this year, and many see he has a great chance. The question now is who will follow Moussa, whose tenure ends in May, as Secretary-General of the pan-Arab organisation, a post which traditionally goes to someone from the country where the League's headquarters are located. Moussa enjoys some sort of consensus among the Arab states, which means it will be hard for a newcomer to take the helm. Egypt's Former Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mufeed Shehab is so far Egypt's sole nominee to succeed Moussa, according to sources. But observers do not see Shehab as a possible winner, since he is widely seen as part of the regime of Mubarak, who appointed him as minister. Moustafa el-Fiqi, a seasoned diplomat and Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of Egypt's dismantled Shura Council (the Upper House of Parliament) is viewed as another good choice for the Arab League's top post. “Apart from the question of the Secretary-General, what is more important is that the League should continue as a tool for the unity of the Arab states, containing Arab-Arab differences and representing the Arabs at the world level,” says Mohamed el-Shazli, a member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs. He adds that there are several Egyptians and Arabs who deserve the post. “Although I'd like the new chief to be Egyptian, there's nothing in the League's Charter to prevent non-Egyptians from running for the post.” For Sobhy Essila, a researcher at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, any Egyptian nominee would win. Thus, Shehab still has a good chance, unless a new nominee is put forward by the Egyptian Government. “But if Shehab is withdrawn, as many see him a symbol of the defunct regime, el-Fiqi is a top nominee,” says Essila, adding that the latter always distanced himself from the Mubarak regime. El-Fiqi also has good relations with Arab political and cultural circles, as a politician, diplomat and thinker, according to observers. Ex-Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit has also been considered for the post, but he is also seen as part of the toppled regime and his exclusion from the interim Sharaf Government weakens his chances. Iraqi politicians would like former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to take the position, but the country's permanent delegate to the League, Qays al-Azzawi, recently said that Baghdad has yet to approach him about this. “If this proposal were indeed serious, I would have been informed about it by Iraq's Foreign Ministry,” al-Azzawi has been reported as saying. For six years, Algeria had been calling for rotation of the post, but, after a dispute over a football match with Egypt in late 2009 was settled, it now has no objection to the next AL chief being Egyptian. Algeria's delegate to the League in Cairo, Abdel-Qader al-Haggar, says they have no nominee as yet. Meanwhile, Egypt's ‘Facebook youth' have launched a web page on the social networking utility calling for Ahmed Youssef Ahmed, a professor of political science in the Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences, Cairo University and director of the Institute for Arab Research and Studies, to be nominated for the Arab League's top job. A leading specialist in inter-Arab affairs, Ahmed is known to be a staunch believer in the Arab unity. The idea of rotation might be considered, if an Egyptian nominee finds no consensus among the Arabs.
