Mubarak nominates Safwat al-Sharif as a chairman for the Shoura council

The Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak asked the minister of information Safwat al-Sharif -- in a telephone call from Germany where he is receiving medical treatment -- to nominate himself to the post of the chairman of the Shoura Council.

Well-informed sources said that according to this instruction from President Mubarak, the minister of information will submit his resignation from this post which he had occupied for 22 years on Thursday after approving the nomination.

The same sources explained that the Egyptian minister of culture Farouk Hosni will temporarily assume the information ministry until the current government gives its resignation to President Mubarak after his return back from treatment trip.

Al-Sharif started his life as an officer in the Egyptian army which he had quitted in the beginning of the 1970s and then joined the general commission for information in 1975 and become a chairman for it in 1978. He was appointed by the former Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat in 1979 as a minister of state for information before he became a minister of information in 1982.

Parliamentary sources said that al-Sharif might be obliged to quit his position as a secretary general of the ruling national party because the chairman of the Shoura council, according to the rules of the law the committee in charge of forming parties, can not occupy a leading position in one of the parties.

The transfer of al-Sharif ( 71 year old) from the government to the Shoura council comes at a time when Arab and foreign papers talked about differences among heads of old guards in the Egyptian government -- with al-Sharif is considered as one of them -- and the wing of Jamal Mubarak, son of the Egyptian President who wants to introduce reforms.