Background
Mohammed Murad GHALEB was born on April 1, 1922, at Cairo, Egypt.
Mohammed Murad GHALEB was born on April 1, 1922, at Cairo, Egypt.
Educated at Cairo, where he graduated as a doctor in 1945 and then continued his studies to become an MSc in surgery
After practising as a specialist in children's diseases he was appointed in 1950 as a lecturer at Alexandria University. Nasser was convinced that Ghaleb would make an outstanding diplomat and wooed him from medicine into the Foreign Ministry in 1953. Two years later he was in the Egyptian delegation to the 1955 Geneva conference and in 1956 he attended the London conference on the Suez Canal.
It was Nasser who earmarked him as a kremlinologist and gave him his first posting to Moscow as a second secretary in 1956. He returned to Cairo to serve at the Presidential office as Secretary for Foreign Affairs and then was promoted Deputy Under-Secretary at the Foreign Ministry in 1959. Later that year he was given the rank of ambassador and appointed Secretary-General for Political Affairs. In 1960 he was sent to Kinshasa as ambassador and served on the Congo Reconciliation Committee.
In 1961 he was appointed Ambassador to the Soviet Union and stayed in that important post for 10 years as a special link between the President and the Kremlin. His skill as a diplomat was demonstrated when Kruschev was ousted in October 1964—he quickly established the same close links with Brezhnev and Kosygin. His powers of persuasion paved the way for Nasser to get Russia to re-equip the Egyptian army and air force after the losses of the Six-Day War in June 1967.
In September 1971 he was recalled to Cairo to join Mahmoud Fawzi’s fourth government as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. When Sadat made Aziz Sidki Prime Minister on January 1 7, 1972, Ghaleb was promoted Foreign Minister in succession to Mahmoud Riad. He headed the Egyptian delegation to the OAU summit at Rabat, Morocco, in June 1972. But his days at the Foreign Ministry were numbered when the Russians were sent packing and Sadat began to reorient his foreign policy to lessen dependence upon Moscow. Ghaleb was dismissed on September 18, 1972. When Sidki was sacked in March 1973 and Sadat took over the premiership Ghaleb was brought back into the cabinet as Minister of Information.
Although neither pro- nor anti¬communist, he symbolised the epoch of close relations between Egypt and Russia—and when President Sadat ended the Soviet military presence the chill wind forced Ghaleb out into the cold too. More of a technocrat than a politician, he has the classic intellectual approach of a professional in government. For journalists he has the added essential for a minister in charge of the mass media—integrity.