JORDAN NOMINATES PRINCE ZEID TO SUCCEED KOFI ANNAN

UNCLAS AMMAN 006932 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL PINR UN IZ JO SUBJECT: JORDAN NOMINATES PRINCE ZEID TO SUCCEED KOFI ANNAN REF: AMMAN 1100 ¶1. (U) The GOJ announced that on September 5 its UN mission nominated Prince Zeid Bin Raad Al-Hussein, Jordan's Permanent Representative to the UN since 2000, for the post of UN Secretary General. Jordan also formally asked the Arab SIPDIS League to support Prince Zeid's candidacy. ¶2. (U) Jordan's official news agency PETRA called Zeid "a distinguished diplomat and member of international peacekeeping forces." Jordanian official media portrayed the Prince as an advocate for international law and for causes of special concern to the Muslim world, highlighting his advocacy for a UN inquiry into the Srebrenica massacre, and support for the establishment of the International Criminal Court. ¶3. (U) After his nomination Prince Zeid, who was in Amman, told reporters that "we believe there is considerable scope to be given by the Security Council and the General Assembly to a Muslim candidate who is familiar with the UN but not of the UN." ¶4. (SBU) A brief biography of Prince Zeid follows: Prince Zeid Bin Raad was born in Amman January 26, 1964. His father, Prince Raad bin Zeid, became the most senior member of Iraq's exiled royal family after his cousin, Faisal II, was assassinated in 1958. The young Raad was vacationing with his mother in Switzerland at the time of the coup, and thus was one of the few Iraqi Hashemites to survive. Zeid's father also served as Chamberlain in the court of the late King Hussein. Neither Zeid nor his father asserts any claims to the former Hashemite throne in Iraq. Prince Zeid's mother, Majda Raad, is the former Margaretha Lind, born in Sweden. King Abdullah's great-grandfather, King Abdullah I, was the half-brother of Prince Zeid's grandfather. Zeid's paternal grandmother descended from a notable Ottoman family and was a regionally famed painter. Prince Zeid was educated in Jordan, the U.S. and the United Kingdom, and earned a Ph. D. in history at Cambridge. He served as an assistant researcher in the economics department of Jordan's Royal Scientific Society in the early 1980s and received his commission as an officer in Jordan's desert police - the Badia Corps - in 1989. Prince Zeid oversaw tribal affairs for Badia Forces from 1989-1994 and served as an UNPROFOR Political Officer in the former Yugoslavia from 1994 to 1996. From 1996 to 2000 the Prince worked as head of the Non-official Labor Group for the War Criminals Preparatory Committee for the International Court of Justice, as head of the Peace Corps for the Non-Aligned Movement, and as Vice President for the International Conference for the Members' Agreement on Anti-Personnel Landmines in Mozambique. After becoming Permrep in 2000, Zeid also served as head of the advisory committee of UNIFEM. He is a member of the advisory committee of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation, a project of the Salzburg Seminar. Prince Zeid Bin Raad is married to Princess Sarah Zeid (the former Sarah Butler); they have a son and a daughter. HALE