Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
CAIRO, Egypt - President Hosni Mubarak's cabinet resigned Friday and the longtime leader appointed a relative outsider as prime minister, further consolidating his power at a time of growing calls for political, social and economic change.
State-run television interrupted its programming to report that Mubarak named Ahmed Nazief, a 52-year-old former state minister for communications and information, to replace the prime minister of the past four years, Atef Obeid, 72.
Mubarak's choice follows a pattern of appointing technocrats - rather than more politically inclined lawmakers - to the post, a situation critics say is designed to ensure political power is not placed into the hands of a potential challenger to his presidency.
The 76-year-old Mubarak, a close U.S. ally and president since 1981, has no chosen successor. His length of time in office and concerns about his health - he recently had surgery to repair a slipped disc - have fueled calls for him to designate a replacement. Many believe he is grooming his son, Gamal, to take over, though both deny this.
The resignations of Obeid and 32 ministers were announced after an emergency cabinet meeting late Friday. It was the first cabinet reshuffle since July 2002, but had been expected for some time.
Obeid's ministers had been blamed for failing to address the needs of this Arab country's beleaguered economy, which during the past four years has suffered from its floating of the Egyptian pound, a shortage of foreign currency and a drastic lack of exports against rising imports.
Also, despite much publicized attempts to stamp out Egypt's culture of graft, the government has been unable to fully rid its bureaucracy of corruption.
As prime minister, the Cairo-born Nazief will run Egypt's day-to-day activities. Fluent in English and French, he graduated from Cairo University's engineering faculty in 1973 and has a doctorate in computer science from a Canadian university. He was a professor at Cairo University before becoming executive manager of the information center within Egypt's Council of Ministers.