El akhdar el ibrahimi biography of michael

The universally esteemed diplomat won the confidence of former US President Bill Clinton when he served as UN senior administrator in Haiti in the mid-1990s, and of George Bush in Afghanistan where he successfully concluded a two-year term as the UN senior envoy to Kabul.

Al-Ibrahimi worked closely with the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, in orchestrating successful US-UN collaboration in Kabul.

His crowning moment was when he brokered an agreement among all ethnic and religious groups on a democratic constitution at the recently concluded grand council, or loya jirga, in Afghanistan.

His appointment as a senior adviser to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, is seen as an attempt to bridge the gap between the UN and the US in a bid to point the way toward a similar achievement in Iraq.

Al-Ibrahimi’s distinguished negotiation skills have been tested in the harshest of circumstances when heading UN missions to hotspots such as Yemen