Ali Osman Taha

Ali Osman Taha

Ali Osman Mohammed Taha (Arabic: علي عثمان محمد طه‎, also transliterated "Othman" or "Uthman") is the First Vice President of Sudan. He had been the Second Vice President of Sudan of Sudan between August 2005 and July 2011. He held the position of first First Vice President from 1998 to August 2005. He was the country's Foreign Minister for three years prior to becoming first Vice President and is a member of the National Congress Party.

Taha is a graduate of the Faculty of Law at the University of Khartoum. He then set up a private law practice before being appointed as a judge and then entering politics as a member of Sudan's parliament in the 1980s.

Taha, along with John Garang, is credited as being the co-architect of Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement which brought Africa's longest civil war to an end on 9 January 2005. The agreement capped an eight-year process to stop the civil war, which since 1983 had taken 2 million lives. Starting in December 2003 Taha and Garang met numerous times to finalize the peace agreement.

Taha heads the Sudanese side of the Sudanese-Egyptian High Committee, which is headed on the Egyptian side by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and includes Ministers from both countries and aims to foster cooperation between the two countries.

Omar al-Bashir reappointed Taha as the Second Vice President of Sudan in May 2010 in spite of speculations that he would be replaced by a more hard-line NCP member or a Darfurian.