U.N. Ambassador Top Choice for Iraq Envoy Post

John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is emerging as the top candidate to become the American envoy to Iraq, U.N. diplomats and U.S. officials said Monday.

The ambassador in Iraq would take charge of the U.S. “super-embassy” of about 3,000 people after the U.S.-led occupation hands power back to an Iraqi government, scheduled for June 30.

Negroponte, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s nominee, has met with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to discuss the prospect, said a U.S. official who, like others willing to discuss the matter, requested anonymity because the decision had not been finalized. The White House is expected to finalize it later this week.

“He’s the guy that everybody’s talking about,” said a senior State Department official. “But the name is only known by a few, and they haven’t made the announcement yet.”

Others previously reported to be on the president’s short list for the post are senior National Security Council aide Robert D. Blackwill, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and career diplomat Thomas R. Pickering. Pickering is a government veteran who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George H.W. Bush. Blackwill, who also has a distinguished diplomatic resume, was a former ambassador to India and a foreign policy advisor to the current president during the 2000 campaign.

The post will carry enormous responsibility and pressure, because the ambassador is expected to be a symbolic lightning rod in the middle of Iraq’s transition to sovereignty.

“It’s the challenge of a lifetime,” said the State Department official. “To bring about peace and democracy in a country which has had neither in its entire history gives the future ambassador a full plate.”

The ambassador must also appeal to both critics and supporters of the war, and provide leadership among allies in Iraq while no longer maintaining the level of control that U.S. civil administrator L. Paul Bremer III now holds in the country, analysts say. With less than three months until the scheduled transfer of sovereignty, the nominee also must be someone who can quickly gain confirmation in the Senate.

At the United Nations, Negroponte has overseen the difficult and drawn-out negotiations over Iraq, and is leading the faltering effort to persuade other nations to be involved in the U.S.-led drive to rebuild the country. He is widely seen by other ambassadors here to be an evenhanded professional who has had to carry out sometimes contentious instructions from the Bush administration.

Negroponte began his foreign service in 1960 in Hong Kong, went to Vietnam as a political officer in 1964, and was the country expert at then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger’s side at the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 and 1969. He served as ambassador in several key postings. While in the Honduras from 1981 to 1985 during the U.S.-funded arming of rebels seeking to overthrow the leftist regime in neighboring Nicaragua, he was accused by human rights critics of underplaying abuses by death squads in order to safeguard burgeoning congressional military aid to Honduras.

As ambassador to Mexico from 1989 to 1993, he was credited with quietly easing the two countries’ long estrangement and paving the way for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Posted to the Philippines from 1993 to 1996, he led a discreet housecleaning of top diplomats suspected of selling visas.

After a brief stint in the private sector for publisher McGraw-Hill, he was confirmed as ambassador to United Nations a week after the Sept. 11 attacks. He has been a longtime friend and colleague of Powell, serving as his deputy in the National Security Council in the late 1980s.

Negroponte speaks Greek, French, Spanish, Vietnamese and English -- and his brief media appearances often turn into multilingual affairs.

Officials posted to Iraq are instructed to leave their families in the U.S. because of the volatile security situation and lack of international-level schools. Negroponte’s wife, Diana, is British, and a former associate at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. The Negropontes have five adopted children from Honduras, four of whom are in college or boarding school.

Negroponte had an operation for prostate cancer in the weeks before the first Security Council resolution giving Iraq “a final opportunity” to disarm and continued negotiations from his recovery bed.