Clinton’s Man in Bosnia: Diplomat With Undiplomatic Love of Limelight : Profile: Negotiator Richard Holbrooke is known for his ego, ambition and ability to attach himself to powerful people who can advance his career.

As point man for the Clinton Administration’s newly emboldened policy on Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke has reasserted U.S. leadership in the Balkans and, to his undisguised satisfaction, thrust himself onto the center of the international stage.

Starting as a junior foreign service officer in Vietnam more than 30 years ago, Holbrooke, now 54, has spent much of his adult life in diplomacy. It is a field that traditionally requires a certain measure of genteel anonymity. But he has always sought the limelight, driven by what admirers and detractors alike call an overarching ambition and towering ego.

Sometimes, as in his work cobbling together a preliminary peace agreement between the warring factions in the shattered Yugoslav federation, Holbrooke’s approach produces results that might escape more self-effacing officials.

After more than four years during which two U.S. administrations groped for the moral high ground in the Balkans while shying away from committing U.S. power and prestige, Holbrooke pressed for a more forceful approach this summer, about a year after he assumed the post of assistant secretary of state for Europe.

U.S. officials say that Holbrooke, U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright and a few others called for a more active U.S. diplomatic effort, backed by a North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs. It was a high-risk strategy that may yet go wrong, but the initial results appear more promising than the government’s earlier, more cautious approach.

Assessing the Bosnia peace negotiations, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former State Department and National Security Council official, called Holbrooke “an untiring guy who identifies his ambitions and proclivities with the national interest.” Under the circumstances, Sonnenfeldt said, that seems to be the right personality for the job.

Of course, it took more than personality to persuade the leaders of the rump Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to accept the framework that could lead to a peace agreement. Even Holbrooke’s harshest critics agree--sometimes grudgingly--that his intellect is as impressive as his ego.

“If you look at Holbrooke’s history, he has personality patterns that, if you or I had them, we’d be out in the cold,” said one former U.S. official. “But for some reason it doesn’t seem to hurt him.”

Throughout his career, Holbrooke has demonstrated an unerring ability to attach himself to powerful people. In Vietnam, he served on the staff of Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, the U.S. military commander, and Henry Cabot Lodge, the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam. Later he joined the staff of W. Averell Harriman, Washington’s chief Vietnam peace negotiator.

“He knows who’s got power, and he is absolutely shameless in getting close to people who can help him,” said a former official in the Jimmy Carter Administration.

That description fits, to a greater or lesser extent, just about everyone in Washington. The difference is that Holbrooke never quite takes the trouble to mask his ambition. In a recent profile, Vanity Fair magazine described him as “a sort of caricature of the Washington Man.”

During the Carter Administration, Holbrooke--then 35--was named assistant secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific, making him the youngest person in decades to reach that senior level.

Out of government during the 12 years between the Carter and Clinton administrations, Holbrooke reached the top level on Wall Street, rising to the post of managing director of Lehman Bros. He still had time to write dozens of articles for newspapers and magazines and co-author former Defense Secretary Clark M. Clifford’s autobiography.

Last May, Holbrooke married journalist and author Kati Marton at the residence of the U.S. ambassador in Budapest, Hungary. Marton, former wife of ABC-TV anchorman Peter Jennings, is Holbrooke’s third wife.