Kamaluddin Refaat

Kamal Rifaat (; 1 November 1921 – 13 July 1977) was an Egyptian military officer and one of the members of the Free Officers movement. He held several government posts after the Egyptian revolution in 1952.

Early life and education Rifaat was born in Alexandria on 1 November 1921. Then he worked in Khartoum, Sudan, in a secret organization to resist the British occupation.

Rifaat was appointed acting minister of religious affairs in February 1959 when Ahmad Hassan Bakoury resigned from the post. Rifaat was also made the chairman of the Dar Akhbar Al Youm company, publisher of the Akhbar Al Youm newspaper, in 1960 when all publications in the country were nationalized.

Rifaat was named as the minister of state and labour in August 1961 to the cabinet led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. He was also made acting minister of social affairs on 12 October 1961 when Syrian ministers vacated their posts in the cabinet. Rifaat was permanently appointed to the post in the cabinet formed on 18 October Rifaat was one of the twelve members of this council. He was also one of the members of the Arab Socialist Union's higher executive committee in 1962 and became part of its secretariat in November 1964. Between 1971 and 1973 Rifaat was the ambassador of Egypt to the United Kingdom.

After leaving public service Rifaat became the leading figure of the non-Communist leftists who supported the Nasserism. In 1976, he co-founded the National Progressive Unionist Party with Khaled Mohieddin, another member of the Revolution Command Council, known as Free Officers Movement.

Views Rifaat was one of the Free Officers who had Marxist views and had a Titoist leaning. However, later he became one of the fierce critics of the Iraqi Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim whom he regarded as having connections with both Western imperialism and Communism.

Rifaat described Al Asifa people or the Fatah members as elite and excellent revolutionaries on 3 August 1966, but he also added that their operations should not be "a threat to Israel’s survival." In addition, he stated that these operations should be "connected and coordinated with the overall Arab plans for the liberation of Filastin." He was the recipient of the Order of the Republic and several decorations from Cameroon, Morocco, Yugoslavia and Tunisia.