Biographical Note

Hamid al bayati of iRAQ CHAIRMAN OF THIRD COMMITTEE

Hamid al Bayati, the Permanent Representative of Iraq to the United Nations, has been elected chairman of the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) of the sixty-first General Assembly on 8 June.

Mr. Al Bayati has been his country’s Permanent Representative since 27 April, when he presented his credentials to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.  Previously, he served for two years, from 2004 to 2006, as Iraq’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for Political Affairs and Bilateral Relations.

In a related appointment that began in November 2004, he remains the head of the Iraqi Centre for Strategic Studies.  From August 2003 to April 2004, he was an adviser to a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Sayed Abdul Aziz al Hakim.  From May to August 2003, he was an adviser to the late Ayatollah Mohamad Baqir al Hakim.

From 1995 to 2002, Mr. Al Bayati was a board member of INDICT, a British organization that collected evidence about the alleged crimes of Saddam Hussein and his aides.  From 1992 to 2002, he served as Director of the World Charity Foundation in London.  In those same years, he was the editor of the Iraq Update, a weekly English newsletter.  He was an elected member of the Leadership Committee of the Iraqi National Congress in London, from 1992 to 1998.

Among the recent conferences in which Mr. Al Bayati participated as a member of the Iraqi delegation was the Islamic Conference Organization Summit in Saudi Arabia (December 2005), the International Conference for Economic Cooperation in Iran (August 2004) and the Iraqi Opposition Conference in Salah al Deen (2003).

Mr. Al Bayati has published several books in English and Arabic, as well as many articles about politics.  He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1974 from Baghdad University and his master’s degree in language and philosophy in 1980 from Cairo University, Egypt.  He received his doctorate degree in politics in 1990 from Manchester University, United Kingdom.

He holds dual citizenship in Iraq and the United Kingdom, and speaks English and Arabic, as well as some French, German and Farsi.

Born in Baghdad in 1952, Mr. Al Bayati is married.

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*     This supersedes Press Release BIO/3762 of 27 April 2006.

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