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TRIPOLI - Veteran Libyan diplomat Ali Abdel Salam al-Triki lost his job when his post of African unity minister was abolished in a government reshuffle announced Saturday. Triki, 65 this year, saw his ministry absorbed into the foreign ministry, still headed by Abdel Rahman Shalham in the new government headed by Shukri Ghanem, a former economy minister and oil expert who replaces Mubaral al-Shamekh as prime minister. Ghanem holds a PhD from a US university.
| I wonder if there are more than a hundred non-Libyans in the world who even knew Libya had a prime minister... |
Triki served as foreign minister from 1976 to 1981 and 1984-86, as well as ambassador to France, the United Nations and the Arab League in his long career. He became African unity minister when the portfolio was created in 2001, reflecting a switch in Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's policy to regard Libya as an African rather than an Arab state.
| Then they discovered Africa's as goofy as the Arab world... |
The policy reached its culmination with the creation of the African Union in July last year, with more teeth than the Organisation of African Unity it replaced.
| It has four teeth, as opposed to none... |
At the same time Kadhafi threatened to pull out of Arab League, an organisation he accused of failing to deal effectively with Arab problems, notably the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The threat was lifted last month.
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