Nabil Shaath

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Nabil Shaath (L) with Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 1997

Nabil Shaath (Arabic: نبيل شعث‎) (also spelled Sha'ath, born 1938 in Safad, Palestine) is a senior Palestinian official who has held the following titles:

Palestinian chief negotiator
Palestinian cabinet minister
Palestinian International Co-operation Minister
Planning Minister for the Palestinian National Authority
Acting Prime Minister of the PNA

Shaath served as the Palestinian Authority's first ever foreign minister from April 2003 to February 2005. Shaath made news on 2005-10-07 by commenting for a BBC documentary that in a 2003 meeting with United States President George W. Bush, Bush told him and other Palestinian officials that he was "driven with a mission from God."

According to Shaath, the quotation was this:

"God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq... And I did.

"And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East. And by God I'm gonna do it."

Shaath later qualified his comments, saying that he and other world leaders at a Jordan summit two years ago "understood that he was illustrating [in his comments] his strong faith and his belief that this is what God wanted." Both the White House and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who was also present at the meeting, deny that Bush ever made such a statement.^[1]^[2]^[3]

On December 15, 2005 Shaath became Acting Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority after Ahmad Qurei resigned. He lost that position nine days later when Qurei returned to office.

In 1976, Shaath started Team International as one of the first large Multi Arab Consulting Companies. By the early 1980s, Team Int. was already established as a field leader.^{[citation needed]}