Body of Minister al-Moallem escorted to his final resting place

Damascus, SANA_ The body of Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign and Expatriates Minister Walid al-Moallem was escorted to his final resting place amid an official and popular presence.

Minister of Presidential Affairs Mansour Azzam represented President Bashar al-Assad at the funeral ceremonies.

The funeral procession set off from al-Shami Hospital to Saad bin Muaz Mosque, where funeral prayer was performed for the peace of the late soul and then the body was buried in the cemetery of Mezzeh neighborhood in Damascus.

The Lebanese Minister of Social Affairs and Tourism, Ramzi Musharafieh, participated in the funeral, representing General Michel Aoun, President of the Lebanese Republic.

The funeral was attended by Assistant Secretary General of the Baath Arab Socialist Party (PASP), Hilal Al-Hilal, the ministers of Endowments, Information, Public Works, Housing and Education and a number of members of the central leadership of the PASP, members of the People’s Assembly.

Governors of Damascus and its countryside, and a number of Arab and foreign ambassadors, representatives of diplomatic missions accredited in Damascus, heads and members of professional unions and popular organizations, prominent official, political, religious and economic figures, and national and Palestinian parties also participated in the funeral.

The late Minister was a longtime diplomat who has been known for his honorable and dignified national stances at different political and diplomatic arenas.

He was born in Damascus in 1941 and studied in its public schools from 1948 to 1960, the year in which he obtained a high school diploma and then studied at the University of Cairo and graduated in 1963 with a B.A. in economics.

He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1964 and served in the following missions “Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Spain and England.” In 1975, he was appointed as Syria’s Ambassador to the Republic of Romania till 1980 as he was appointed as a Director of the Documentation and Translation Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1980 to 1984, and later he was appointed as Director of the Private Offices Department from 1984 to 1990.

The Late al-Moallem was appointed as Syria’s Ambassador to the United States from 1990 to 1999, and then he was appointed as an Assistant Foreign Minister in early 2000, and he was later appointed as a Deputy Foreign Minister according to the decree No. 8 of 09/01/2005, and held the position of Foreign Minister since 2006. In 2012, he was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign and Expatriates Minister.

He has four books (Palestine and Armed Peace in 1970), (Syria in the Mandate Period from 1917 to 1948), (Syria from Independence to Unity from 1948 to 1958) and (The World and the Middle East from the American Perspective).

Al-Moallem is married and he has three children.

Gh.A.Hassoun