Fuad Rouhani

Fuad Rouhani (1907 - 2004) was an Iranian administrator. He served as the Secretary-General of OPEC between 21 January 1961 and 30 April 1964.

Fuad Rouhani was born in Tehran on October 23 1907. Rouhani completed his early education in Tehran and went to work in the oil industry, then under British control.

Rouhani, educated as a lawyer, was born in Iran and trained in London and Paris. Rouhani worked in a company which discovered first and produced oil in the country, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which became later British Petroleum. He advised the Iranian government on its nationalization of the company in 1951, and later advised Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi on oil matters. He preferred a more moderate, nonideological approach.

When OPEC set up its office in Geneva in 1961 before moving to Vienna Rouhani was elected the organization's first secretary general, an administrative post that also involved mediating between conflicting factions. He served for three years, the only Iranian to do so. Currently, Iran is demanding that an Iranian be chosen to fill the current opening.

OPEC's success has long been a matter of debate, with many analysts saying that the marketplace and the willingness of one country, Saudi Arabia, to limit output have been the deciding factors in determining oil prices. The oil embargo of 1973 was initiated just by the Arab producers, not OPEC as a whole.

In 1964 Rouhani was succeeded by an Iraqi, Abd ar-Rahman al-Bazzaz, who encouraged talk of both radical politics and Islamic religion.

He earned two law degrees from the University of London 1937. A quarter-century later, in the middle of a career in public service, he entered the University of Paris, receiving a doctorate in law in 1968.

He went on to advise the Shah from 1965 to 1968, he was secretary general of the Regional Cooperation for Development organization, which worked to foster economic integration among Iran, Pakistan and Turkey.

Rouhani, though not religious himself, found time to write "A Guide to the Contents of the Koran," as well as other books on religion. He also translated into Persian works by Plato and C.G.Jung, among others.

He played the tar, a traditional Persian musical instrument, and was an accomplished pianist. Mr. Rouhani was co-founder of the Philharmonic Society of Tehran.

After the Iranian revolution of 1979, when Mr. Rouhani's house and possessions were confiscated, he moved to Geneva, and later to London where he died of age 96.