Reply #49: Libyan professor rises to role of rebels' prime minister

[tabatha]

By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times

September 7, 2011, 5:04 p.m.
Reporting from Tripoli, Libya—
Ali Tarhouni could use some sleep. Fatigue has eclipsed elation for the U.S. business school professor who has become one of the new Libya's most high-profile leaders.

"Caffeine and nicotine what is keeping me going," Tarhouni acknowledged Wednesday in the wood-paneled office where Moammar Kadafi's prime minister was once ensconced.

His portfolio for Libya's transitional government comprises economics and the energy sector, no small matters in an oil-rich nation embarking on an ambitious makeover of Kadafi's peculiar strand of crony socialism.

But in the absence of top interim leaders here in Tripoli, Tarhouni has been serving as a kind of stand-in prime minister. His first task: getting a battered capital that initially lacked security, running water, power, public services and gasoline up and running again.



http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-professor-20110908,0,3206828.story