| Dr. Zalmai Rassoul | |
|---|---|
| Zalmai Rassoul in June 2011 | |
| Foreign Minister of Afghanistan | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 10 January 2010 |
|
| President | Hamid Karzai |
| Preceded by | Rangin Dadfar Spanta |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1942 Kabul, Afghanistan |
| Nationality | Afghan |
| Religion | Islam |
Dr. Zalmai Rassoul (born 1923[1]) is a politician in Afghanistan, serving as the Foreign Minister since January 2010 after receiving the confidence vote of the Afghan National Assembly. He previously served as National Security Advisor of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which he held since June 2002. He has accompanied Afghan President Hamid Karzai on all official visits since the establishment of the Interim Administration in 2001.
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Rassoul was born in or about 1923 in Kabul, Afghanistan. He attended Lycée Esteqlal where he graduated as the valedictorian. Subsequently, he traveled to France to study on a scholarship at the Paris Medical School and received his M.D. in 1973. An ethnic Pashtun, he is fluent in Dari (Persian), Pashto, French, English, and Italian and has a working knowledge of Arabic. He has over 30 publications in European and American medical journals and is a member of the American Society of Nephrology.
Since 1998, Rassoul devoted his full attention to the convening of the Emergency Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) as the director of the Secretariat of Mohammad Zaher Shah, the former King of Afghanistan. Under Rassoul's leadership, the Secretariat in Rome played a key role in the future political transition of Afghanistan. Prior to the Bonn Conference, Zahir Shah dispatched numerous delegations to world capitals, Afghanistan's neighbors, and Afghanistan itself to build support for the convening of the Emergency Loya Jirga.
Rassoul accompanied President Hamid Karzai, at that time a leading member of the Executive Committee of the Loya Jirga, on these missions. Rassoul was suited for this work because of his long term, close contact with Afghan resistance and his 1980 founding and publishing of the monthly publication Afghan Reality created to increase awareness and be a voice of information from inside Afghanistan to the international community regarding the plight of the Afghan people. Rassoul has been politically active for several decades in the struggle for the freedom of Afghanistan and the right of the Afghan people to decide their future in accordance with their free will.
Dr. Rassoul was nominated by President Hamid Karzai as the Minister of Civil Aviation, and unanimously approved by the Cabinet in March 2002. Under his able leadership, Afghanistan's aviation sector was revived after many years of United Nations sanctions against the Taliban and Afghanistan. Rassoul played an important role in Afghanistan's readmission to the International Civil Aviation Organization (IATA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Prior to his service in the current Afghan government, Rassoul served as a delegate to the historic November 2001 Bonn Conference. Following the Bonn Conference, he accompanied President Karzai to Kabul for the inauguration of the Afghan Interim Administration.
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