Abu Dhabi (UAE)- Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates, died on Friday at 73, according to state media, after battling illness for several years. “The Ministry of Presidential Affairs expresses condolences to the people of the UAE and the Islamic world… on the death of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan on Friday, May 13,” said the official WAM news agency.
The ministry declared 40 days of mourning beginning Friday, with flags flying at half-mast and work suspended in public and private sectors for the first three days.
Sheikh Khalifa became the UAE’s second president in November 2004, succeeding his father as the 16th ruler of Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest emirate in the federation. He has not been seen in public since 2014 when he underwent surgery after suffering a stroke, but he has continued to issue rulings.
In recent years, his brother, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, has been regarded as the UAE’s de facto ruler. Khalifa was born on 7 September 1948 .
On 3 November 2004, he took over as Emir of Abu Dhabi and President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), succeeding his father, Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who had died the day before. He had been acting president since his father became ill and died.
Khalifa re-elected as President for a second five-year term in 2009. During his presidency in February of 2022, the UAE signed partnership agreements with Israel on tourism and healthcare.
As Dubai’s fortunes began to falter along with the global economy in 2009, Khalifa led efforts to protect the federation by pumping billions of dollars in emergency bailout funds into Dubai. The two emirates do not always see eye-to-eye on foreign policy decisions and compete commercially with one another. In 2003, he called for the creation of a new airline, Etihad Airways, which competes with Dubai’s successful and much larger carrier Emirates Air.
Khalifa increasingly used Abu Dhabi’s oil wealth to attract cultural and academic centers, such as branches of the Louvre museum and satellite campuses of New York University and the Sorbonne. He also presided over efforts to move the OPEC country beyond its reliance on petrodollars with investments in renewable energy research, including plans for a futuristic low-carbon desert city known as Masdar.
Abu Dhabi’s big spending overseas during Khalifa’s rule also helped push the emirate, which controls the bulk of the UAE’s oil reserves, out from Dubai’s shadow.
In 2007, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds, came to the rescue of an ailing Citigroup Inc. with a $7.5 billion cash injection. Less than two years later, another Abu Dhabi state fund made one of its biggest in a series of headline-grabbing purchases when it paid nearly 2 billion euros (then worth about $2.7 billion) for a 9.1 percent stake in German automaker Daimler AG, the firm behind Mercedes-Benz.
Khalifa, meanwhile, helped boost the UAE’s regional profile with relief missions to Pakistan after devastating floods and by sending warplanes to the NATO-led mission against Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya in 2011.
Questions were raised during Khalifa’s rule about the UAE’s use of foreign military contractors, including one linked to the founder of the former Blackwater security firm, Erik Prince, who moved to Abu Dhabi in 2009. Prince was involved in a multimillion-dollar program to train troops to fight pirates in Somalia, according to an official who spoke to The Associated Press in early 2009.
But Khalifa’s name is perhaps most familiar around the world for its connection to the world’s tallest building, a nearly half-mile (828-meter) glass-and-steel spire in Dubai.
The name of the tower was unexpectedly switched from the Burj Dubai to the Burj Khalifa at its official opening in January 2010 following his decision to funnel billions of dollars to Dubai to save it from a full-scale financial meltdown.
Khalifa took over as the UAE’s president and ruler of Abu Dhabi in November 2004 following the death his father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who is widely revered by Emiratis as the country’s founding father.
Khalifa’s image was ubiquitous, gracing every hotel lobby and government office across the country. But unlike Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the federation’s vice president and prime minister, he was rarely seen in public.
