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Friday January 12, 2007

Jews welcome nomination of Muslim to U.N. post

by ben harris
jta

new york | Zalmay Khalilzad is unlikely to equal his predecessor’s vigorous support of Israel, but Jewish leaders quietly welcomed the news that President Bush had chosen the career diplomat as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

On Monday, Jan. 8 the White House officially nominated Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, to replace John Bolton, who resigned his temporary appointment last month after failing to win congressional approval.

Bolton quickly endeared himself to Jewish groups for his outspokenness on Israel and his vocal criticism of the world body.

Few expect Khalilzad, if confirmed by the Senate, to be nearly as untamed in his oratory. He is widely viewed as a smooth operator and a skilled diplomat with a particular talent for deal-making.

“He’s a foreign policy professional with a difference, and the difference is he really likes to engage with ideas and different points of view,” said Felice Gaer, an American Jewish Committee official who has interacted with Khalilzad in her capacity as chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Despite more than two decades in the State Department, Khalilzad remains something of an unknown quantity on issues of Jewish concern, particularly Israel.

Whatever optimism was evident in the reaction to his appointment was largely a product of his reputation as a Bush loyalist who will faithfully carry forth the administration’s strong support for Israel and its hard line on Iran.

Nicholas Rostow, a former official at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and current vice chancellor for legal affairs at the State University of New York, has known Khalilzad for 20 years and says he is an “outstanding” diplomat.

“I don’t have any reason to believe he would be any less staunch on issues of concern to the Jewish community than John Bolton, John Negroponte or John Danforth,” Rostow said, referring to the last three American U.N. envoys.

A native of Afghanistan and a Sunni, Khalilzad is the highest-ranking Muslim in the Bush administration. He was educated at the University of Chicago, where he earned a doctorate in political science in 1979. He joined the State Department five years later.

Khalilzad speaks Persian and Arabic, and his understanding of the Middle East has made him indispensable to American foreign policy, particularly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

He has served in Afghanistan and, most recently, as ambassador to Iraq, and some view the U.N. job as compensation for his years spent in those tough surroundings.

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