Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1997

Bulletin Board

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Convenings

The Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI) will convene "Rights  of Passage: An International Conference on Women's Human Rights Education"  at The American University's Center for the Global South in Washington,  DC Sept. 26 and 27. For complete information contact SIGI, 4343 Montgomery  Ave., Suite 201, Bethesda, MD 20814, phone (301) 657-4355, fax (301) 657-4381.

The Association of Arab-American University Graduates will hold its  30th Annual Convention, on "Arabs, Arab Americans, and the Global  Community," at the Georgetown University Conference Center in Washington,  DC from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, featuring keynote speakers Edward Said and Huda  Abdel Nasser. For information and registration contact AAUG, 2121 Wisconsin  Ave. NW, Suite 310, Washington, DC 20007, phone (202) 337-7717, fax (202)  337-3302, e-mail aaug@igc.apc.org

Opportunities

American Friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat Al Salam, a national tax-exempt  organization providing finacial and other support for the village in Israel  where Palestinians and Jews have lived together for over 20 years, is seeking  a New York-based executive director with fund-raising experience. Applicants  should send by Sept. 15 a r’sum’, cover letter and salary  requirements to: Chairman, Search Committee, American Friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat  Al Salam, 121 Sixth Ave., #505, New York, NY 10013, e-mail 76574.2710@compuserve.com

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is organizing two Rebuilders Against  Bulldozer teams to spend 12 days in Israel/Palestine focusing on the issue of house demolitions. Participants are asked to raise $1,700 to cover costs,  and to communicate their experiences to local congregations and the media  upon their return. Delegation dates are Oct. 7-19 and Dec. 10-22. For additional  information or an application contact CPT, P.O. Box 6508, Chicago, IL 60680,  phone (312) 455-1199, fax (312) 666-2677, e-mail cptrich@igc.org

Appointments

The American University of Beirut has announced that, effective at the  end of this year, its new president will be Dr. John Waterbury, director  of Princeton University's Center of International Studies, Princeton's  William Stewart Tod Professor of Politics and International Affairs, and  editor of the quarterly journal World Politics. Dr. Waterbury earned  a B.A. in Oriental Studies from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Political  Science from Columbia. He studied Arabic as a Fulbright scholar in Egypt,  conducted three years of dissertation research in Morocco and served for  six years in Cairo as the Middle East correspondent for the American Universities  Field Staff. Dr. Waterbury will succeed David S. Dodge, who has served  as acting president since December 1996 and is the great-grandson of AUB  founder Daniel Bliss.

Edward S. Walker Jr., current U.S. ambassador to Egypt and former number  two to then-U.N. Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright, is expected to be named  Martin Indyk's successor as U.S. ambassador to Israel. Daniel Kurtzer.  longtime assistant to Middle East coordinator Dennis B. Ross and most recently  at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, is expected  to be nominated as Walker's replacement in Cairo, and William J. Burns,  a former deputy to Ross, is expected to be nominated as U.S. ambassador  to Jordan. Career foreign service officer and former U.S. Ambassador to  Azerbaijan Richard Dale Kauzlarich has been confirmed as the new ambassador  to Bosnia, replacing John Menzies. Named as new U.S. ambassador to Kyrgystan  is Anne Marie Sigmund, currently counselor of the U.S. Information Agency.

Deaths

Mohammed Mahdi Al-Jawahri, the Iraqi poet known as "the Singer  for the Sunlight," died July 27 in Damascus, Syria at the age of 97.  He had lived in Damascus since 1979, when he fled Iraq following a government  crackdown on dissidents. Prior to 1958 he was a courtier of Iraqi King  Faisal, later becoming an independent journalist writing against the monarchy  and its British protectors.

Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad Rouhani, a leading Shi'i cleric whose  espousal of the separation of religion from politics distanced him from  Iran's ruling clergy, died July 25 in Qom, Iran, of internal bleeding from  an undisclosed ailment at the age of 78. A native of Qom, he was a student  of Shi'i spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Abul Qassim al-Khoel, who died  in 1992.

Ahmed Mahmoud Qutub, an Arabic writer and editor with the U.S. Information  Agency, died in Annandale, VA of a heart attack at the age of 58. Born  in Tulkarm, Palestine, he was an information specialist with the USIS in  Tunisia from 1963 to 1983. He joined USIA in Washington in 1983, and in  1995 received Vice President Gore's Hammer Award for government reinvention.  Survivors include his wife, Nadia, and three children, Mahmoud, Husam and  Yamena.

Marlen Eldredge Neumann, a civic activist and the wife of retired U.S.  Ambassador Robert G. Neumann, died July 15 of a pulmonary disorder at Washington  Hospital Center at the age of 81. Born in Miraj, India to American parents,  she graduated from Rollins College in Winter Park, FL, and earned a master's  degree in diplomatic history from Yale University. She accompanied her  husband to assignments in Afghanistan, Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia,  among other posts, and served as chairman of the Foreign Diplomatic Wives  Association and on the board of the Association of American Foreign Service  Women in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to her husband, she is survived  by their two sons, U.S. Ambassador to Algeria Ronald Eldredge Neumann and  Gregory W. Neumann of California, and five grandchildren.

Mildred Alice Vardaman, a retired foreign service officer and Middle  East specialist with the U.S. Information Agency, died June 26 of pneumonia  in a Sylacaua, AL nursing home at the age of 92. A native of Alabama, she  graduated from George Washington University in Washington, DC, and began  her government career in 1934 as a placement officer. She worked for several  agencies before transferring to the State Department in 1945 and to the  U.S. Information Agency when it was created in 1953. Her assignments included  cultural affairs officer in Beirut and cultural center director in Athens,  as well as several positions in USIA's Washington area office for the Near  East and South Asia. Retiring in 1967, she was a life member of the Middle  East Institute and of Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired.

Kathryn F. McAndrew, a neonatal nurse practitioner and former clinical  supervisor in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the Saudi Aramco base  hospital in Dhahran, died March 13 at the University of Tennessee Bowld  Hospital of cardiogenic shock, at the age of 40. A member of numerous professional  organizations, she was a 1978 graduate of the College of William and Mary,  earning a bachelor of science and nursing from the Frances Payne Bolton  School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University in 1980 and a master  of science degree in nursing from the University of Tennessee-Health Sciences  Center in 1993. She worked at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston from  1981 to 1987, in Saudi Arabia from 1987 to 1991, and was a neonatal nurse  at the Regional Medical Center at Memphis at the time of her death. Her  parents, Thomas and Constance McAndrew, live in Tucson, AZ, where they  retired after a number of foreign service assignments including Beirut  and Basra in the 1960s.