Career Diplomat Likely to Be U.S. Envoy to U.N.

President Bush is expected to name John D. Negroponte, a career diplomat, to be U.N. ambassador, U.S. and diplomatic sources said this week.

In his globe-trotting 37-year career, the 61-year-old Negroponte had eight assignments overseas, including ambassador to Mexico, the Philippines and Honduras.

He was in charge of Vietnam affairs under Henry A. Kissinger in the National Security Council and attended the 1973 Paris peace talks that led to the end of the American involvement in the Vietnam War. Later, during the Reagan administration, Negroponte held a top post in the council under Colin L. Powell, now secretary of state.

After leaving government in 1997, Negroponte became an executive director of the McGraw-Hill publishing company in New York.

Diplomats here have worried that the new administration was distancing itself from the world body. But U.N. watchers say the nomination of Negroponte is a reassuring sign.

“It would be great if [Bush] assigned someone like Negroponte, who is really professional, a career diplomat, and not a political appointee who would bring an ideological perspective,” said William Luers, a former ambassador who heads the United Nations Assn. in New York.

Diplomatic and other sources confirmed that Negroponte’s appointment was imminent but did not want to be quoted before the president made a formal announcement.

Negroponte’s first challenge will be to reinvigorate support in the Security Council for maintaining pressure on Iraq until President Saddam Hussein rids his country of weapons of mass destruction.

As ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s, Negroponte helped coordinate the Nicaraguan Contra rebels’ war against the Sandinista government. His posting to Mexico in 1989 by President George Bush alarmed Mexican intellectuals, who feared that he would bring a Cold War approach. Instead, Negroponte was credited with fostering closer ties between the U.S. and Mexico and laying the groundwork for establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In the Philippines, he quietly rooted out corruption in the U.S. Embassy, making him a solid candidate to push for reforms at the United Nations.

Negroponte speaks Greek, French, Spanish and Vietnamese and is known in diplomatic circles as a brilliant thinker and gracious leader.