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| Sunday, 17 July 2005 |
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Major shake up in Maldives cabinet Colombo (AFP) - Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom Thursday announced a major cabinet shakeup including the promotion of his spokesman as the Indian Ocean atoll nation's new foreign minister. Ahmed Shaheed, who replaces long-standing Foreign Minister Fathulla Jameel, told AFP the cabinet had been reshuffled in order to help the country recover from the December 26 tsunami disaster. "The president has brought in several new faces to cabinet because of the new challenge of rebuilding the country after the tsunami disaster," said 41-year-old Shaheed, a career diplomat. His new job would entail seeking support from the international community to held the Maldives recover from the disaster, he added in a telephone interview. Shaheed said he would push Gayoom's reform agenda to move towards multi-party elections in the nation of 300,000 Sunni Muslims inhabiting 202 small coral islands out of a total of 1,192 scattered 850 kilometres across the equator. In other cabinet moves, former health minister Ahmed Abdulla was made the minister of environment, energy and water while Gayoom's brother-in-law Ilyas Ibrahim was moved to the health ministry. Six senior members were dropped from the cabinet, including Jameel, Gayoom's brother Abdullah Hameed who held the influential atolls administration portfolio and Home minister Umar Zahir. Speaking on national television, the president said the country had to balance political reforms with the necessity to address the needs of people in after the tsunamis that killed 100 people and hurt the fishing and tourism sectors. |
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