International
Sultan Qaboos Of Oman Cause Of Death
Sultan Qaboos death is the talk of the town in Oman. Oman’s ailing Sultan Qaboos bin Said, one of the Middle East’s longest-serving rulers who maintained the country’s neutrality in regional struggles, died on Friday, January 10.
Ekohotblog understands that the Gulf state’s high military council has started the process to choose his successor.
This online news medium reports that the State news agency ONA did not give a cause of death, but Sultan Qaboos had been unwell for years and spent a week in Belgium undergoing medical treatment in early December 2019.
Sultan Qaboos, who ruled Oman since overthrowing his father in a bloodless coup in 1970, died at age 79.
Since assuming power, Qaboos transformed Oman from an isolated backwater, with little or no infrastructure, into a modern state.
Ekohotblog understands Sultan Qaboos had no children and had not publicly appointed a successor. A 1996 statute says the ruling family will choose a successor within three days of the throne becoming vacant.
Several reports say the high military council, in a statement carried on state media on Saturday, called on Oman’s ruling family council to convene to choose a new ruler.
Oman observers say the sultan’s three cousins – Assad, Shihab, and Haitham bin Tariq al-Said – stand the best chance.
“I imagine that the succession itself will be a smooth process within Oman,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen of the Texas-based Rice University’s Baker Institute told Reuters.
“But the wildcard is whether any of Oman’s neighbours might try to pressure the new sultan as he settles into power – just as the Saudis and Emiratis tried to pressure Emir Tamim in the weeks and months after he assumed power in Qatar in 2013.”
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