Najib Mikati (born November 24 1955) is the Prime Minister of Lebanon. He was appointed to this post by President Émile Lahoud on 15 April 2005, to succeed Omar Karami, who gave up after seven weeks of frustrated efforts to form a consensus government and resigned. Like all Prime Ministers since 1943 (except for two who have served in a caretaker capacity), he is a Sunni Muslim.
Mikati graduated from the American University of Beirut in 1980 with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree. He went on to complete a PhD in Business Studies at Harvard University in the United States in 1989. He subsequently founded the Mikati Group , which has since grown into a telecommunications empire with significant investments throughout the Arab world.
After being appointed to the Cabinet as Minister of Public Works and Transport on 4 December 1998, he was elected to the National Assembly from his hometown of Tripoli in 2000, outpolling Omar Karami, who was elected from the same multimember constituency. As a parliamentarian, he retained his cabinet position and developed a reputation as a moderately pro-Syrian politician with a good relationship with Syrian President Bashar Assad. He turned down an opportunity to become Prime Minister in 2000, insisting that Rafik Hariri was the choice of the Lebanese people. In 2004, he came out against the ad-hoc amending of the Constitution to extend six-year term of the pro-Syrian President Lahoud for another three years. This indicated that despite his own pro-Syrian inclinations, he was not a Syrian puppet - a factor that counted in his favour when a new Prime Minister had to be appointed in the wake of Karami's resignation on 13 April 2005.
In the negotiations to form a government, Mikati emerged as a consensus candidate. Despite his closeness to Syria, his willingness to compromise won the support of the anti-Syrian opposition, against the strongly pro-Syrian Minister of Defence, Abdul-Rahim Murad . "We will be the symbol of moderation and national unity," Mikati declared after being sworn in at the Presidential palace in Baabda .
Mikati's immediate priority will be to steer an electoral bill through the National Assembly ahead of a crucial parliamentary election, which is scheduled to be held by 31 May 2005. Constitutionally, a government must be in place to call an election, and opposition politicians had accused President Lahoud and former Prime Minister Karami of stalling the formation of a goverment in order to thwart the holding of an election, which anti-Syrian parties believe they can win.
