^cAmr Mūsá was born in Egypt in 1936. He graduated from the Department of Law at Cairo University in 1957 and functioned as a lawyer for one year until he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1958. In 1977 he was appointed director of the International Organizations' Department. From 1981 till 1983 he functioned as an alternative representative to the UN, then as Egypt's ambassador to India from 1983 to 1986. After this he returned as a director in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until he was appointed Egypt's ambassador to the UN in 1990. In 1991, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in Egypt. He held this position until 2001 when he accepted the position as general secretary of the Arab League.

Mūsá's election as general secretary of the Arab League in May 2001 was unanimous and included support from both sides of drawn-out conflicts in the Arab world like Iraq and Kuwait, and Algeria and Morocco.

On assuming office in the Arab League, he said that it was one of his goals to renew the organization to "turn it into a powerful voice of unified Arab opinion."1 One Arab observer writing in al-Sharq al-Awsat in March 2007 sees that Mūsá has used his personal integrity to broaden the respect for the Arab League, but that he has not been able to change the fundamentals of the bureaucracy, and thus concluded that the leader is greater than the organization.2

In 2004, an online petition collected more than 7000 signatures urging Mūsá to run in the 2005 presidential election in Egypt.3 The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs from 2005 noted that Mūsá had frequently been cited "as the civilian figure Egyptians would elect as president if they had a real choice."4 An article from Time Magazine widens his scope and calls him "perhaps the most adored public servant in the Arab world."5 However, when asked about the issue, Mūsá merely answered that he "hoped to continue the recent run of successes that have occurred under his leadership at the Arab League until the end of his term."6

^cAmr Mūsá is married and has two children.

His name is often spelled: Amr Moussa, Amr Musa or Amr Mussa.

 

As the general secretary of the Arab League and earlier as Egyptian foreign minister, Mūsá has played a pivotal role in negotiations around most of the major disputes in the Arab world.

In relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict, in 2007 he helped to re-invigorate the Arab Peace-Initiative which was first presented by Saudi Arabia in 2002. The initiative was adopted by 11 Arab states on the summit of the Arab League in April 2007. It offers Israel normalization with all the Arab states in exchange for a return to the 1967 borders based on UN resolution 242, the establishment of a Palestinian state with a capital in East-Jerusalem and granting the right of return to Palestinian refugees. All fundamental points of the initiative have been refused by Israel.

In the fall of 2006, Mūsá was a leading mediator between the parties to the mounting political crisis in Lebanon following the summer war between Israel and Hizb Allāh. These negotiations were focused around a proposed distribution of ministerial seats between the governmental majority, the opposition and a number of "neutral" ministers to be appointed by a third party. This solution would not give the opposition the "critical third" of the seats which would have given them veto-power. At the time of writing, these efforts do not seem to be paying off.

Mūsá has also played an active part in negotiations in the dispute between Morocco and Algeria over Western Sahara, the civil war between Northern and Southern Sudan centered in Darfur and the political developments in Iraq following the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

Mūsá's popularity in the Arab World

Critics of Egyptian president, Husnå Mubārak, allege that the president got Mūsá transferred to the Arab League because he was envious of his highly popular minister, and wanted to get him out of the spotlight. Mūsá's popularity in the Arab world mainly sprang from the fact that through his 10 years as minister of foreign affairs he had been a staunch critic of American foreign policy in the region and their relationship with Israel. Despite his long experience as a diplomat Mūsá was known to have a hot temper and to express his opinions on the issue openly. His popularity rose to the degree that in 2001, only a few months before he left office in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Egyptian singer Sha^cabān ^cAbd al-Rahåm issued a hit-song called "I love ^cAmr Mūsá, I hate Israel" (b-ahib ^cAmr Mūsá, b-akrah Isrā'ål).7 On one occasion in 1999, Mūsá refused to shake hands with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during a visit to Tel Aviv. He later explained that he "believes that Sharon does not like shaking hands because he refuses to shake hands with Yasser Arafat."8

 

^cAmr Mūsá is deeply concerned about the distorted image of Islam and the Islamic world in the West. In 1998, he opposed the view held by some American Copts that the killing of 20 Coptic Christians in the Egyptian village of al-Kushh was part of a systematic persecution of Copts in Egypt.9 (For more information on the al-Kushh events see various reports in RNSAW/AWR)

In 2001, in his function as general secretary of the Arab League, he called for "holding a conference to discuss the image of Arabs in the eyes of other civilizations,"10 on the grounds that the problems between Arabs and the West "were not to be solved through policy and diplomacy as the root of these problems is cultural and intellectual."11

In 2004, he further called for a review of the "European curricula of history referring to the increasing conflict between the East and the West due to the distorted image of 'the other' on both sides and the widespread Islamophobia in the West."12 Furthermore, he has "compared Islamophobia to anti-Semitism describing it as not any less in gravity."13

Mūsá is highly critical of the concept of Christian Zionism which is strong among broad circles of American Evangelical Christians. He finds it an "extremist religious theory [whose followers] seek to achieve political gains that will cause worldwide disturbance."14 He claims it has been "falsely attributed to heavenly religions" and that it is used to "justify Israeli expansions and the killing of Palestinians." Therefore, in 2002, he called for Eastern churches to work to counter the influences of this ideology and its spread to Europe.

His concern for the Palestinian cause was expressed well in the al-Ahrām newspaper on May 19, 2002: "[There] would be no peace in the Middle East unless Israel ended its occupation of Palestinian land. […] Israels' aggressive practices and the arrogance of the current Israeli government created a great danger, as it turned the culture of peace into one of war."15

Mūsá has repeatedly called for international cooperation to combat terrorism and has criticized the British government for hosting known terrorists.16 However, in face of the Western media storm against Muslims and Arabs in the wake of September 11, 2001, he has been keen on pointing out that terror is not caused by Islam. In a conference in 2002 on dialogue he stated that "terrorism has no religion and what is going on is an attack on Islam."17 In 2005, he condemned the kidnappers of two French journalists in Iraq saying that "…if the kidnappers wished to protect the reputation of Islam, they should free the two French men who had shown a sympathetic stance towards the Iraqi people."18