Mohamad Chatah

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Mohamad Bahaa Chatah (Arabic: محمد شطح) is a Lebanese economist and diplomat. He currently serves as a senior adviser to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

Born in Tripoli to Ihsan Chatah and Ezze Karami, Ambassador Mohamad Chatah spent his childhood years studying at Tripoli Boys' School and later moved to Beirut to pursue an economics degree at the American University of Beirut. His studies were cut short with the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, and a year later Chatah and his wife Nadera "Nina" Mikati fled Lebanon for the United States and settled in Austin, Texas. Chatah continued his studies in the States and received his PhD in economics from the University of Texas in 1981. Mohamad and Nina had their first son, Ronnie, in June 1981.

Two years later Chatah and his family moved to the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.. It was in D.C. that Chatah began his career at the International Monetary Fund. The family's second son, Omar, was born in December 1984. Chatah served as a Board advisor at the IMF, and settled in suburban Virginia. Following the end of the Lebanese civil war, he decided it was time to make Lebanon home once again, and by 1993 his family was settled in Beirut. He began his 5-year term as a Vice President of the Banque du Liban, Lebanon's central bank, only this time the term was cut short not because of war, but because of his appointment as Ambassador of Lebanon to the United States in early 1997.

Chatah served as Ambassador of Lebanon to the U.S. from 1997 to 2000; his term ended with the resignation of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He returned to the IMF in 2001 and stayed until June 2005. Chatah's resignation from the IMF coincided with the assassination of Hariri on February 14, 2005; he returned to Lebanon as a senior adviser to the newly elected Prime Minister Fouad Siniora (a long-time Hariri confidante). With the July 2006 war, Chatah appeared on numerous Western news outlets as a public spokesman for the Lebanese government. When asked on the role of the Lebanese government in disarming local armed groups, Chatah said "we are doing it [through] dialogue and persuasion, and trying to reach a point where the state is the sole holder of weapons and the one with the only authority throughout our territory." ^[1]

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