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Bush picks pro iran afghan for UN seat { January 6 2007 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/middleeast/06khalilzad.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/middleeast/06khalilzad.html
Man in the News
Zalmay Khalilzad, on to a New Trouble Spot
By HELENE COOPER
Published: January 6, 2007
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 — In successive tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad earned a reputation as a high-flying, independent, smooth operator — an Afghan-born problem solver who worked with two fragile countries recently invaded by the United States to try to cobble together stability.
Now, as President Bush’s choice to become the next ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Khalilzad is headed to another American trouble spot, though his record would suggest that he is less likely to ruffle bureaucratic feathers than his predecessor, John R. Bolton, who often seemed to regard the organization as a foe.
Mr. Khalilzad joined the Bush administration as a well-known, neoconservative hawk, in the style of Paul D. Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary. Born in Afghanistan and educated in Beirut and the United States, Mr. Khalilzad, as a policy planner in President Reagan’s State Department during the 1980s, argued that the United States should arm Afghanistan’s mujahedeen.
He was America’s first ambassador to Afghanistan, where he became known as the “viceroy,” a term evocative of colonialism. He became known for his ability to weave through warring tribal factions and his ability to quickly get senior Afghan officials on the phone or to summon them to his office, including President Hamid Karzai.
In 2005, he was sent to Iraq, where he failed the task of bringing stability, but succeeded in helping Iraqis to agree on a Constitution. Arriving in Baghdad, he quickly recognized that his marching instructions from Washington — that Iraq’s Constitution should reflect a strong central government with strong control over the country’s oil resources — were not achievable. Mr. Khalilzad advised his bosses that any deal on an Iraqi Constitution would have to provide for greater regional control over the country’s oil fields, a key demand of Iraq’s Kurdish population.
“He was pragmatic to see that the instructions he had were not achievable, and he had enough clout in Washington to get them changed,” said Peter W. Galbraith, the former United States ambassador to Croatia and the author of “The End of Iraq.”
Mr. Bolton, the fiery former ambassador, could not have done that, Mr. Galbraith and other current and former diplomats said, because Mr. Bolton seemed to view the world in starker terms of black and white, and shied away from compromise, even though that approach is prized at the United Nations. The blunt-spoken Mr. Bolton’s confrontational style often conflicted with the understated ways of the United Nations.
Mr. Khalilzad is no shrinking violet but he is less confrontational, people who have worked with both men at the State Department said. “I think he will be welcomed and will get a good response at the U.N., because of his experience, but also simply because he’s following John Bolton, who broke a lot of crockery,” said Mitchell B. Reiss, a former policy and planning director at the State Department who is now vice provost at the College of William and Mary.
Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad, known as Zal to his colleagues and friends, was born on March 22, 1951, in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, to an urbanized, highly educated and outward-looking Kabul family. During his high school years, Mr. Khalilzad attended the Ghazi Lycée in Kabul, a rigorous, elite school, and went out for the Afghan national basketball team.
He attended the American University of Beirut and then the University of Chicago, where he studied under Albert Wohlstetter, the innovator in strategic nuclear doctrine. Mr. Khalilzad received his Ph.D. in 1979, taught political science at Columbia University and joined the State Department in 1984. He is married to Cheryl Bernard, a political analyst with the RAND Corporation. They have two children, Alexander and Maximilian.
Mr. Khalilzad, a Sunni Muslim, is known at the State Department for his staunch — some say, swaggering — belief that he is a deal broker who can solve any problem. State Department staffers sometimes joked that Mr. Khalilzad, who has advocated talking to Iran, might one day go off script, personally meet with Iran’s ruling mullahs and return to inform his bosses that he had worked everything out in American-Iranian relations.
During his time as the United States ambassador to Iraq, Mr. Khalilzad received permission from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to hold talks with Iran about the deteriorating security situation in Iraq. But those talks never happened, although Ms. Rice has consistently referred to “the Zal channel” as an option that the United States could use at any time if Bush officials decided they wanted to talk to Iran.
Mr. Khalilzad speaks Arabic and Persian and often fingered worry beads during long sessions with Sunni and Shiite leaders in Iraq. The fact that he is a Sunni Muslim did not always play well among Iraq’s majority Shiite population, and he was sometimes viewed with suspicion and sometimes accused of favoring Sunnis.
In recent months, he has told colleagues that he was ready to leave Iraq. He was considered for the position of Ms. Rice’s deputy, the job for which John D. Negroponte has been nominated.
State Department officials said they expected Mr. Khalilzad would get along better with bureaucrats at the United Nations than did Mr. Bolton, but noted that they still expected him to carry on America’s agenda for change.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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