Mohammed Kamel, 74; Egyptian Leader Quit Over Israeli Accords
Mohammed Ibrahim Kamel, 74, a onetime foreign minister of Egypt who quit in 1978 to protest his country’s signing of the Camp David peace accords with Israel, died Thursday at a Cairo hospital of an unidentified illness, according to a Foreign Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
An associate of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Kamel was named foreign minister in 1977 after his predecessor, Ismail Fahmy, quit to protest Sadat’s peacemaking visit to Israel.
Kamel accompanied Sadat to the U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations in Camp David, but resigned to protest what he saw as the accords’ vagueness in dealing with the Palestinian issue.
The accords signed in 1978 were formalized in a 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel--the first between an Arab nation and the Jewish state.
Born in Cairo, Kamel studied law at Cairo University before starting a government career that eventually led to the foreign service.
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