Mohamed Benaissa

Mohamed Benaissa (Arabic: محمّد بن عيسى‎) (born January 3, 1937 in Assilah, Morocco) is a politician from Morocco who was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of that country from 1999 to 2007.

Benaissa received a bachelor's degree in communications from the University of Minnesota in 1963, which also awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2007. After studying at Columbia University, he went on to serve the United Nations and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization for approximately eleven years,^[1] first as press attache to the UN Moroccan Mission in New York (1965), then as information officer at the UN headquarters in New York and in Addis Ababa (1965–1967), regional information adviser for Africa at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Accra, Ghana (1967–1971), communications adviser for the FAO at Rome (1961–1974), director of the information division at the same (1974–1976), and finally as Assistant-Secretary General at the UN World Food Conference (1974–1975). Benaissa returned to Morocco to become Member of Parliament for the city of Assilah between 1977 and 1983 and then Mayor of Assilah in 1984, a position to which he has been reelected three times up to the present day (2010). Between 1977 and 1985 he served as chief editor to Al-Mithaq (Arabic) and Al-Maghrib (French) dailies, the newspapers of the Rassemblement National des Indépendants (RNI) party to which he then belonged.

Benaissa was the Minister of Culture from 1985 until 1992, and the Moroccan ambassador to the United States from 1993 until 1999. In April 1999, King Hassan II appointed Benaissa to the position of Foreign Minister just three months before his death. Benaissa remained in his position under Hassan's successor, King Mohammed VI, until he was replaced by Deputy Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri in the government formed on October 15, 2007 under Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi.^[2][3]

Benaissa is author (with Tahar Benjelloun) of "Grains de Peau" (1974) and of essays and papers on development and communications. In 1989 he was recipient of the Aga Khan award for architecture for the urban development project of the city of Assilah.

References

1. ^ "Mohamed Benaissa: Biography"
2. ^ "Morocco Forms New Government", Associated Press (time.com), October 15, 2007.
3. ^ "Le roi nomme un nouveau gouvernement après des tractations difficiles", AFP (Jeuneafrique.com), October 15, 2007 (French).

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Name	Benaissa, Mohamed
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Date of birth	January 3, 1937
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