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Veteran Diplomat Is Bush's Pick for UN Post - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum Veteran Diplomat Is Bush's Pick for UN Post
By Christopher Marquis
New York Times
February 18, 2001
President Bush has selected John D. Negroponte — a three-time ambassador who has served in some of America's most sensitive diplomatic posts — to become the next ambassador to the United Nations, an administration official said today.
Mr. Negroponte, who served as ambassador to Mexico in the previous Bush administration, is a skilled bureaucratic infighter who speaks five languages and is close to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, under whom he served as a deputy on the National Security Council in the late 1980's.
He also once served as a deputy to Richard C. Holbrooke, the current ambassador, who called him "a superb professional diplomat" and eminently qualified for the job. "If it's true that he has been selected, I think it is very good news for the United Nations and for the United States," Mr. Holbrooke said.
The Bush administration official, confirming that Mr. Negroponte had been offered the job and had accepted it, said his credentials and his new assignment were a natural fit. The announcement will be made officially after the routine and time- consuming process of formally vetting senior appointees is completed.
In a career of nearly four decades, Mr. Negroponte, 62, occasionally drew criticism, especially for his role in carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. As ambassador to Honduras between 1981 and 1985, Mr. Negroponte oversaw a military buildup that turned much of that country into a springboard and refuge for the anti- Sandinista rebels known as contras. Mr. Negroponte, who was occasionally referred to as the American proconsul, was criticized for using aid to buy Honduran compliance.
His nomination in 1989 to become ambassador to Mexico drew howls of protest from intellectuals and leftist political leaders, who were distressed by his holding of posts in Vietnam and Central America and his close ties to American intelligence agencies. Mexican newspapers dramatically pondered what dark purpose President Bush might have in appointing him.
But by the time he left the Mexico City post in 1993, he was widely praised for overseeing an important warming in relations as reflected by the North American Free Trade Agreement. He then served as ambassador to the Philippines for three years.
Mr. Negroponte, whose appointment requires Senate confirmation, would succeed Mr. Holbrooke, a voluble and flamboyant diplomat, who raised the profile of the United Nations position. As one of his last acts, Mr. Holbrooke succeeded in persuading Congress to release hundreds of millions of dollars in back dues to the United Nations after winning administrative reforms and a permanent reduction in the American dues. The two men are old friends, who were roommates in Saigon in 1964 and 1965.
It is unclear whether Mr. Negroponte, a behind-the-scenes negotiator, will maintain a similar profile to that of Mr. Holbrooke. While the position is the last major national security post to be filled, an administration official said earlier this week that it was "highly unlikely" that it would carry cabinet rank, as it did under President Clinton. But Mr. Holbrooke said that does not matter. Indeed, he has long maintained that it is unnecessary to have cabinet rank for the job.
Mr. Negroponte, a Yale graduate, served as political officer in Saigon between 1964 and 1968, during the Vietnam War. Fluent in Vietnamese, he was the country expert at the side of Henry A. Kissinger during the Paris peace talks in the early 1970's. Press reports said he viewed the terms of the incipient agreement to be so harmful to South Vietnam that he quietly resigned his position on the National Security Council and was reassigned to a post in Ecuador.
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