The Barack Obama administration is likely to name several special envoys, including one to India. A transition official confirmed Obama’s foreign policy advisers were discussing the possibility of appointing an envoy with a specific India brief.Another official, however, said reports in the Indian media that Obama was considering former President Bill Clinton to be his special envoy on Kashmir were mere “speculation”. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will be Secretary of State in Obama’s administration, has already begun taking steps to build a more powerful State Department, with a bigger budget, high-profile special envoys to trouble spots and an expanded role in dealing with global economic issues at a time of crisis.She is recruiting Jacob J. Lew, budget director under President Bill Clinton, as one of two deputies, said people close to the Obama transition team. Lew and James B. Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, will be Mrs Clinton’s chief lieutenants. Steinberg, currently dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, would probably coordinate the work of any special envoys, a transition official said.By naming special envoys, officials said, the administration will revive a practice of the Clinton administration, when Richard C. Holbrooke, Dennis Ross and other diplomats played a central role in mediating disputes in the Balkans and the Middle East. Though Mrs Clinton and the President-elect have not yet settled on specific envoys or missions, Ross’s name has been mentioned as a possible Middle East envoy, along with those of Holbrooke and Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel. In addition to the Middle East, Holbrooke might also be considered for the job of special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and possibly Iran, said a Democratic foreign policy adviser. The steps seem intended to strengthen the role of diplomacy after a long stretch, particularly under Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, during which the Pentagon, the Vice-President’s office and the intelligence agencies held considerable sway over American foreign policy. The Bush administration has made relatively little use of special envoys. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice personally handled most peacemaking initiatives, which has meant a punishing schedule of Middle East missions, often with meagre results.“There’s no question that there is a reinvention of the wheel here,” said Aaron David Miller, a public policy analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “But it’s geared not so much as a reaction to Bush as to a fairly astute analysis of what’s going to work in foreign policy.” NYT
