About Amr Mousa Amre Moussa (Arabic: عمرو موسى‎), (born 1936) has been the current Secretary-General of the League of Arab States since his election to the position in May 2001. He is a former Egyptian Foreign Minister and diplomat. He served as Cairo’s ambassador to India in 1984 and as Egypt’s ambassador to the United Nations in 1990. He was appointed Foreign Minister in the cabinet of then-Prime Minister Atef Sedki in 1991 and remained in this position until 2001. Critics of current Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak allege that Moussa's appointment to the Office of Secretary-General of the Arab League was motivated by Mubarak's desire to remove him from the public spotlight. In 2004 an online community gathered tens of thousands of signatures petitioning for Moussa to run in the 2005 elections, but there was no response. In a Doha Debate Forum televised by the BBC in 2006, Moussa was asked about his Presidential hopes. Moussa merely replied that he hoped to continue the recent run of successes that have occurred under his leadership at the Arab League until the end of his term. In 2009, he signed a memorandum of understanding with the Holy See and met with Pope Benedict XVI in order to strengthen joint projects and to promote peace and dialogue on a cultural and political level.