 After leaving the Foreign Ministry, he was reappointed to the premiership under President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya.Khouna helped to come up with and carry out the policies of the President and attended many important conferences in place of Taya.In the summer on 1999, Khouna suffered a foreign policy setback when he could not secure an audience with Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika due to Mauritania's establishing full ties with Israel.