LIBYA - Profile - Abdel Rahman Shalqam.

Secretary for Foreign Co-operation & International Liaison (foreign minister) since March 2000, Shalqam was previously the secretary for information and the chief spokesman for the regime. He took up the foreign liaison portfolio from Dr. Omar Al Montasser.

During GPC's Sirte session last June 7-14, the African Union portfolio was abolished and this function was added to Shalqam's secretariat. As a result, Shalqam has become even more powerful as the African Union is a top priority for Col. Qadhafi.

Shalqam owes much of his success in foreign affairs to the late Dr. Omar Al Montasser, who had established solid foreign policy foundations in the wake of the Lockerbie issue. He is also close to Saif Al Islam Qadhafi.

(Dr. Omar Al Montasser, who died in early 2001, had since March 2000 been chairman of the General Planning Council. From Nov. 18, 1992, until he took up that post, Montasser was behind most of Libya's successful PR events, both within the country and abroad and was given the foreign liaison post so that he could get Libya off the hook after the UN Security Council imposed sanctions against Tripoli because of the Lockerbie bombing. He worked very hard and it was to his credit that the UN sanctions were suspended in April 1999, after Tripoli's handover for trial the two Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing. Educated in Lebanon, Montasser was one of the most prominent technocrats in Libya. He had built up his career as an oilman in charge of NOC. He had many friends in the West including powerful oil company executives and political lobbyists. He served as petroleum secretary and took up the general secretariat - premiership - more than once.

(Born in Tripoli in 1938, he came from a very prominent family. His uncle, the late Mohammed Al Montasser, was a nationalist leader and Libya's first prime minister. As a young man, Omar was sent to Victoria College in Alexandria, which at the time used to be known as the school for Middle Eastern aristocrats, and from there he made friends with a number of people who later were to hold important positions in the Arab world. Thereafter he joined the American University of Beirut, and graduated with a degree in business administration. At AUB, he came into contact with Arab leftists, eventually joining the Arab Nationalist Movement of Dr. George Habash. But he was practical, friendly and pleasant. His AUB friends included Lebanese/Palestinians who later became prominent business executives in such companies as CAT, CCC, Oxy, etc).

Shalqam is quite different from the late Montasser. But although he lacks the latter's educational and social background, Shalqam is powerful and is a member of one of Qadhafi's "inner circles".

As secretary for foreign liaison, with his secretariat having become a super-portfolio since he took up this post, Shalqam is aided by three assistant secretaries: one for political affairs, one for investment and foreign trade affairs, and one cultural affairs and co-operation.

Shalqam's main task now is to make sure the African Union becomes a solid block under Libyan influence. This is Qadhafi's pet project in which he has invested considerably since he proposed it in 1999 (see background in Vol. 57, DT No. 4).