- published: 21 Sep 2012
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Zalmai Rassoul (Pashto: زلمی رسول; born 11 May 1943) is an Afghan politician who served as Foreign Minister of Afghanistan from January 2010 to October 2013. He previously served as National Security Advisor beginning in June 2002. He has accompanied Afghan President Hamid Karzai on all official visits since the establishment of the Interim Administration in 2001. He resigned as Foreign Minister on 5 October 2013 to stand as a candidate in the 2014 presidential election.
Rassoul was born in or about 1942 in Kabul, Afghanistan, to Abdu'l Qayyum Khan Sarkar and his wife Farukh Begum, daughter of Emir Habibullah Khan.Amānullāh Khān, the King of Aghanistan 1909-1929, was his uncle. He attended Lycée Esteqlal where he graduated as the valedictorian. Subsequently, he traveled to France to study on a scholarship at the Paris Medical School and received his M.D. in 1973. An ethnic Pashtun, belonging to Barakzai (Mohammadzai) tribe (of the Zirak branch of the Durrani Confederacy), he is fluent in Dari Persian, French, English, and Italian and has a working knowledge of Arabic and Pashto.