General People's Committee
Ettalhi was a government minister of Libya throughout the 1990s and in the early 1980s during the era of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. His posts included Minister of Communications, Minister of Industry, Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Strategic Industries (1990–94), Secretary of the Great Man-Made River Project (1994–98), and Minister of Planning (1998–2000). Ettalhi was the Secretary of the General People's Committee from 1979 to 1984 and from 1986 to 1987.