Monday, December 01, 2008

Obama Pick for UN Envoy May Face Resistance Over Darfur

By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor

While much attention will be focused Monday on President-elect Obama’s announcement that former rival Sen. Hillary Clinton will assume the top diplomatic post in his administration, his nominee for ambassador to the United Nations will also draw scrutiny in foreign capitals.

Susan Rice, a foreign policy advisor to Obama who was assistant secretary of state for African Affairs in the second Clinton administration, is expected to be named as envoy to the U.N.

Since Obama’s election, advocates of closer U.S. cooperation with the world body have been urging him to appoint an ambassador who will reflect a determination to renew American global leadership by re-engaging with the U.N.

Rice, a 44-year-old African-American – no relation to outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – has been a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she has been an advocate for tougher action to end the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan’s Darfur region and a critic of Bush administration’s response to the crisis.

If the U.S. was serious about stopping the genocide there, she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2007, it would take a series of steps to back up its earlier pledge of harsh consequences should the Sudanese government not accept peacekeepers and stop killing innocent civilians. Read more >>>>>>>>>>

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