-Caveat Lector-
Bush appoints Mideast advisers
By Janine Zacharia
WASHINGTON (February 7) - The White House
has announced two key State Department
appointments that deal with Middle East affairs.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said
yesterday that President George W. Bush would
appoint Marc Grossman, a former ambassador
to Turkey and career diplomat as
undersecretary of state for political affairs, to
the No. 3 position at the State Department, and
Richard Haass as director of policy planning with
the rank of ambassador.
Grossman has been a long-time proponent of a
strong Israeli-Turkish alliance and has held
various positions in the State Department,
including several in the Bureau for Near East
and South Asian Affairs. He is admired in the
pro-Israel community.
Haas, a former special assistant to president
George Bush and senior director for Near East
affairs on the National Security Council, has
advocated a gradual, step-by-step approach in
Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
He has been critical of US sanctions against Iran
and was a formulator of US policy toward Israel
when Likud prime minister Yitzhak Shamir tried
to make his participation in the Madrid peace
conference conditional on $10 billion in loan
guarantees to help cover the cost of absorbing
Soviet Jewish immigrants.
Haas, who is currently vice president and
director of foreign-policy studies at the
Brookings Institution, is remembered for
advocating a tough stance toward Israeli
settlement construction while an adviser to
Bush.
With the closure of the office of special Middle
East coordinator, Haas is expected to assume a
beefed-up role in fashioning Middle East policy
for the new administration. He will work with
William Burns, currently ambassador to Jordan,
who is expected to replace Ned Walker as
assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs
but has not been officially named to the post.
Even more crucial than Haas or Grossman in
developing Middle East policy, however, is likely
to be John Hannah, who recently was selected
by Vice President Dick Cheney to be his Middle
East adviser.
Cheney is expected to wield enormous influence
on both foreign and domestic policy, and has
assembled a wide advisory staff that includes
numerous regional experts.
Hannah, who has been described as a discreet
but formidable analyst, has worked twice at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a
leading Middle East think tank.
Still conspicuously vacant among Bush
foreign-policy appointments is the important
No. 2 slot at the State Department, deputy
secretary of state.
Richard Armitage, a former assistant secretary
of defense under president Ronald Reagan is
expected to be named to the post.
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