DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER and FOREIGN MINISTER, TARIQ AZIZ
REPUBLIC OF IRAQ
1936(Birth year)

RWe grew up.  We matured as politicians.  ItUs maturity, a matter of 
maturation.  People grow up, mature.  ThatUs it.S

	My given name was Mikhail Yuhanna.  Yes, I am a Chaldean 
Christian.  I was born in 1936 near the northern city of Mosul into a 
humble Christian family as the son of a minor Government official.  Since 
Chaldean Christian community is very tiny in Iraq, I changed my name to 
the Muslim-sounding Tariq Aziz, which means Tglorious pastU, so that I 
could work in more comfortable ways with my comrades of Sunni Muslim from 
the village of Tikrit.  My family moved to Baghdad while I was a boy, 
enabling me to study English literature at the Baghdad College of Fine 
Arts when its teaching staff was largely British.
	Although people often mention that I give the appearance of being 
more moderate than my boss in Baghdad, as a party loyalist and a trusted 
member of the Revolutionary Command Council, it is a difference of style, 
not substance.  I and Mr.Hussein became close in the 1950Us, when we 
worked together in the Baath Arab Socialist PartyUs underground struggle 
to overthrow the British-imposed monarchy.  While Mr.Hussein was earning 
his stripes in the Baath hierarchy as a guerrilla gunman, I, with my 
English skill, became a party organizer and propagandist.  I spent much 
of the 1960Us in Syria where I edited three party newspapers, including 
the main organ, Al Thawra.  My years as a journalist and propagandist 
have taught me the importance of image.  I often wear fatigues and an 
ivory-handled pistol at home, a Western business suit in my television 
appearances.  Over the years, I have made myself available to the Western 
press and know many Western journalists by their first names.
	After the Baathists seized power in 1968, I became one of the 
partyUs leading ideologists and served as the countryUs powerful Minister 
of Information from 1974 to 1977.  Elected a candidate member of the 
Regional Command, the partyUs highest body in 1974, I became a full 
member three years later.  Since 1977 I have been a member of the ten-man 
ruling Revolutionary Command Council that Mr.Hussein heads, and I have 
held the title of Deputy Prime Minister since 1979.
	All that time, my loyalty to Mr.Hussein was unquestioned.  
Unswerving loyalty to President Hussein and the ideals of my Arab Baath 
party has always been the hallmark of my career and the secret of my 
success despite my Christianity, which also means that I am no possible 
threat to the leader.  I have escaped the periodic purges of senior 
political and military officials that have characterized the 16 years of 
Mr.HusseinUs presidency.  In 1980, I survived an assassination attempt in 
Baghdad when members of the Iranian-backed Al Dawa Islami movement 
detonated a bomb in which seven people were killed.
	I increasingly came to serve as my leaderUs ears and eyes in the 
outside world.  Although I did not become Foreign Minister until 1983, I 
was effectively running foreign policy from the moment Mr.Hussein took 
power in 1979.  I am not only a culture-bridger who speaks eloquent 
English but also a master negotiator who knows the rules of diplomacy.  
I, tough, loyal follower of Mr.Hussein, am quite used to arguing a 
difficult brief in hostile surroundings.  One newspaper put, RIf Iraq has 
a good face that it wants to show to the world, then Tariq Aziz is the 
man to do it.S
	Throughout the 1980Us I became a familiar figure at the United 
Nations as I tirelessly campaigned for support for IraqUs long war 
against Iran, presenting it as a struggle to stop the de stabilizing 
forces of Islamic fundamentalism from sweeping through the region.  I 
visited Egypt in the summer of 1983 in the first formal contact between 
the two nations since Camp David and oversaw the restoration of 
diplomatic relations in 1987.  I broadened IraqUs diplomatic and military 
ties to the West, personally negotiating with France the loan of Super 
Etendard planes capable of firing Exocet missiles at the height of the 
Iran-Iraq war.  When the United States and Iraq restored full diplomatic 
relations at the end of 1984, I suggested that the two nations had begun 
a diplomatic ThoneymoonU.  Iraq was no longer the rejectionist regime 
that would never resume ties with Washington until it abandoned its 
pro-Israeli policy.
	However, first and foremost, I am a loyal front man for my boss, 
President Saddam Hussein.  I only represent his belief to the world.  So, 
in 1992 when I was back at the United Nations for the first time since 
the Persian Gulf War ended, I was in the dock as I sought to explain to 
an increasingly impatient Security Council my leaderUs reluctance to 
comply with the conditions of the cease-fire.  Despite Toverwhelming 
evidence over the yearsU that Iraq used chemical weapons in the war 
against Iran, I was described to have generally responded with 
straight-faced denials or evasive statements.  In addressing the 
141-country conference on chemical warfare held in Paris in 1989, I made 
no reference to the report that Iraq had widely used chemical weapons 
against Kurdish civilians.
	Currently, I am working to let U.N. lift the economic sanction.


Physical description: short, plump, silver-haired, and
                           cigar-smoking.