Savvy Diplomat Draws Spotlight at Women’s Conference : Mediator: Egyptian Merwat Tallawy’s past serves her well as she chairs subcommittee on health issues. One observer calls her ‘the heroine of Beijing.’

When Merwat Tallawy was just beginning university studies in her native Egypt, her father abruptly pulled her out of school and confined her to the family home.

“He was a rich man and a provincial governor. He didn’t think I needed a university education,” Tallawy recalled Monday, a trace of bitterness flashing briefly in her deep brown eyes.

An Egyptian career diplomat specializing in complicated multilateral negotiations, Tallawy, 58, has emerged as a key figure at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women here.

As chairwoman of the main subcommittee on health issues, Tallawy presides over the debate on most sensitive issues at the conference, including abortion, reproductive health, birth control, sexual orientation and parental responsibilities. Her tough, evenhanded negotiation of the semantic minefields surrounding these issues has won praise from such diverse camps as the Vatican, Norway, Brazil and Iran.

In just four days, Tallawy, who is Egypt’s ambassador to Japan, managed to erase all 91 brackets, or objections, contained in the draft of the final “Platform for Action,” to be issued this week by the conference, which ends Friday.

“She is the heroine of Beijing,” said Joan Dunlop, president of the International Women’s Health Coalition, a New York women’s health advocacy organization. “I think she is the most extraordinary role model for every woman in the conference because of her courage, her obvious skill and knowledge and her toughness.”

One of Tallawy’s first acts as chairwoman of the health contact group--composed of more than 400 delegates from 70 countries--was to offer to resign after several countries accused her of moving too fast. During an interview Monday, Tallawy hinted strongly that the resignation offer was a strategic ploy to bring the diverse delegations into line.

“I offered the resignation to show that I’m not here to favor anyone,” she said with a hint of a smile. “I’m an old hand at this.”

Ellen Marshall, a State Department negotiator assigned to the U.S. delegation to the conference and a Tallawy admirer, attested to the Egyptian’s fairness and toughness. “She’s an equal-opportunity trouncer,” Marshall observed.

The day after her resignation offer, Tallawy won a standing ovation from the delegates for her deft handling of disputes on several key points. On Monday, in the last meeting of her health subcommittee, delegates from country after country--Brazil, Barbados, Honduras, Iran, Ghana and many others--rose to sing her praises.

An example of Tallawy’s presiding style came late Sunday night when she was orchestrating debate on two critical issues involving abortion law and women’s sexual rights.

First, she tolerated long, repetitive interventions from smaller delegations such as Malta, Yemen and Sudan that opposed the measures. Then she appeared to lose her patience when the Spanish representative of the powerful 15-nation European Union wanted to insert new language into the “sexual rights” provision.

“After two days of negotiations, I feel that would be a step backwards,” she told the delegate.

When the chief of the EU delegation asked for another full day to come up with alternative language for the provision, Tallawy granted her 15 minutes--a gesture that brought appreciative murmurs from the smaller delegations.

When the 15 minutes were up, Tallawy was ready to act. She persuaded the Europeans to withdraw their proposed changes. She reminded the delegates that the Beijing meeting “is a conference of action, not a philosophical one like previous conferences.”

Having numbed most of the opposition, she raised her gavel and announced: “Time to make a decision. Agreed.” Bang.

Sally Ethelston, a women’s health advocacy organizer, said Tallawy has all the qualities needed to manage the unwieldy U.N.-format meetings in which tiny Malta has the same say as the United States.

“She has the ability to know when to cut off debate,” said Ethelston. “She knows how to cajole and threaten. She can see when a . . . consensus is building.”

For her part, Tallawy said she came into the meeting partly as a professional negotiator with 30 years’ experience in the Egyptian foreign service and partly as a woman who has suffered discrimination in her own life.

After spending three years confined to her family home, where she said she studied secretly, she finally persuaded her father to permit her return to university. “In the end, he was very proud of me and proud of my struggle,” she said.

Tallawy, who has a grown daughter and a 4-year-old grandson, said her one regret is that her father did not live to see her become Egypt’s first female career ambassador.

Despite her delayed start, Tallawy finished her degree at the American University in Cairo, joined the foreign service and quickly rose through the ranks.

Fluent in Arabic, English and French, she served with or headed Egyptian delegations to international conferences on trade, development and disarmament. In 1988, she was named ambassador to Austria as well as a governor of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

“She is one of the pioneers,” said Mukhtar Bahira, a journalist with the Al Ahram newspaper in Cairo. “She was the first to establish herself in the very difficult, male-dominated foreign service.”