By Barbara Crossette
Mr. Holbrooke, who has yet to be formally nominated by the White House, would have to be confirmed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Senate has now begun the time-consuming issue of impeachment. Congressional aides predicted that the nomination process could take months. In the interim, A. Peter Burleigh, a career diplomat of ambassadorial rank, has been filling in since August.
Mr. Burleigh, an expert on Asia and the Middle East who nearly became Ambassador to Baghdad before the Persian Gulf war broke out, has been piloting the American mission here through a season of multiple crises - in Iraq, Kosovo, Congo and Libya, to name a few. The deputy to Bill Richardson, who left the top United Nations job in August to become Energy Secretary, Mr. Burleigh had been expected to fill in briefly until Mr. Holbrooke's nomination cleared the Senate.
But an anonymous letter to the State Department's Inspector General last summer set off a Federal ethics inquiry into accusations that Mr. Holbrooke had benefited illegally from contacts with former State Department colleagues after he left the Foreign Service in 1996 to become vice chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston, a New York investment bank. Mr. Holbrooke's lawyer, Richard I. Beattie, said he expected Mr. Holbrooke to be cleared of all accusations.
The chief American representative at the United Nations, a position that always carries the rank of ambassador and often includes membership in the President's Cabinet, routinely goes to a political appointee, often someone with close ties to the White House.
Other ambassadors are of two minds about the political nature of the relationship. It can mean that the American representative is often away in Washington and not attending to United Nations issues. But at the same time, diplomats say, it is useful to know immediately and directly through the American representative what an Administration in Washington is thinking.
In addition to political ties, Mr. Holbrooke has had a long and distinguished foreign career. A former ambassador and high-ranking State Department official, he has been President Clinton's Balkan troubleshooter, responsible for engineering the Dayton accord that ended the war in Bosnia and for persuading President Slobodan Milosevic to relax the siege of Kosovo.
Mr. Burleigh said in an interview last month that there are advantages to being a career diplomat here. Most other nations, including all four permanent members of the Security Council - Britain, China, France and Russia - are represented by career Foreign Service officers for whom the United Nations is one of the best ambassadorial jobs. When the press criticized the Clinton Administration for leaving the top American diplomatic post open after the departure of Bill Richardson, Mr. Burleigh said, his colleagues on the Council rallied to his defense.
Furthermore, through the biggest crisis of all, Iraq, Mr. Burleigh has had the advantage of having worked a decade ago with Nizar Hamdoon, Iraq's representative here. Mr. Hamdoon, who is about to return to Baghdad, was Iraqi Ambassador in Washington during critical years of the Iran-Iraq war, when Mr. Burleigh was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, and the United States was backing Iraq. He said he remembers Mr. Hamdoon as "an excellent ambassador." But they had not spoken for a decade when they were suddenly thrown together in mid-November. Mr. Burleigh, as Security Council president, had to persuade Iraq to write conciliatory letters that ultimately allowed the United States to call off an earlier round of attacks.
Mr. Hamdoon, who is normally frozen out of all contact with American officials, became Mr. Burleigh's willing conduit to Baghdad.
