Profile: Tarik Aziz

IRAQI FOREIGN MINISTER TARIK AZIZ, who had shuttled between Moscow and Baghdad in an effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Gulf War, is a polished diplomat who strictly adheres to the policies of his boss, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Aziz, 54, a father of three and the only Christian in Hussein’s 25-member Cabinet, was born Mikhail Yuhanna in a family of Chaldean Christians near Mosul in northern Iraq. He later changed his name to the more Muslim sounding Aziz. Urbane and fluent in English, the cigar-smoking Aziz studied English literature at the Baghdad College of Fine Arts and was briefly a secondary school teacher.