Background
Minassie Haile was brn on February 12, 1930, in Harar (the same province as the Emperor).
Minassie Haile was brn on February 12, 1930, in Harar (the same province as the Emperor).
Educated in Addis Ababa and at the University of Wisconsin, USA, where he took a BA Economics in 1950 and at Columbia University, getting an LLB, MA and PhD in international law in 1961.
After a promising career as Ambassador to the USA, he was appointed to Foreign Affairs, a ministry of immense importance to his country and the Emperor. Here he has continued his predecessor’s policies and is showing increasing interest in southern African problems. He is considered something of an outsider in the cabinet and very much an Americophile.
He started his political career in 1961 as legal adviser in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, soon becoming Chief of Political Affairs and defacto chairman of the Emperor’s private cabinet in 1961. In 1964 he was appointed Minister of State of Information, remaining as a close political adviser who accompanied the Emperor on most of his trips overseas.
When a new government was formed in 1966 he became Minister of Information and Tourism. He was Ambassador to the USA in 1968 until August 19, 1971, when he took over from Ketema Yifru as Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Sharing the Emperor’s wide-ranging interest in Pan African diplomacy, he also continued national policies of maintaining friendship with all the big Powers and neutrality on the Arab- Israeli dispute. He also pursued Ketema Yifru’s rapprochement with Sudan and surrounding Moslem states. Ethiopia’s long-standing sympathy with the Southern Sudanese and their strong desire to bring the Sudan war to an end, resulted in Addis Ababa being chosen for the signing of the peace agreement on February 27, 1972, with the Emperor and Dr Minassie Haile among the witnesses.
He was elected chairman of the Ministerial Council of the 18th session of the OAU in February 1972, where he drew attention to the colonial questions in southern Africa, which he wants looked at “as part of a single problem requiring a coordinated response from the international community”.
He was married to an African-American woman.