ABSTRACT
In the days following the Ismailia meeting I attempted to organize the work in my office at the Foreign Ministry. I took some administrative decisions and held a meeting with the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Dr Boutros Ghali, whom I knew slightly and had met socially. We enjoyed working together though we did differ about certain subjects and our concepts of the right way to fulfil our jobs. He was a well-read and very able professor of international law, with extensive international contacts in his field. His approach to problems was academic and largely theoretical. However, he was of a flexible dispostion in ordinary conversation, and was humorous and gay. We met every day in my office, if only for a few minutes. We engaged in Smalltalk and exchanged information to relieve ourselves from tension and exhaustion. I held meetings with the senior officers at the Ministry, selecting a group to handle the talks, namely Ussama El Baz, Ahmed Maher El Sayid, Abdel Raouf Al Ridi and Nabil El Araby.
