From: Tsegai Emmanuel (emmanuelt40@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Apr 04 2009 - 21:38:39 EST
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http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=6DF8DF5E-18FE-70B2-A8863D1B386274AA
Obama-era goodwill for Rice at U.N.
By: Ben Smith
April 3, 2009 06:15 PM EST
NEW YORK — It is, says Susan Rice, "a good time to be American ambassador to
the United Nations."
Rice, a foreign policy veteran at the age of 44, is positioned to be one of
the administration's key national security voices. She has access to the
president, a restored Cabinet seat and a place on the National Security
Council's Principal's Committee. She's also broadened her Washington
presence, with an expanded office at the State Department.
Rice is, said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry,
"playing a central role in the team that's been assembled."
Perhaps more than any other American official, Rice also is negotiating day
to day the meaning of President Barack Obama's promise of a new era in
American foreign policy, one in which openness doesn't mean weakness and
engagement can be combative.
Some of the earliest moves have been symbolic, like making the controversial
decision to rejoin the troubled U.N. Human Rights Council — where, Rice
said, the United States will battle "the anti-Israel crap." She also said
the administration is still considering attending the controversial
anti-racism conference this month, where U.S. pressure has won a
"substantially improved" draft text.
On a larger scale, Rice has been part of a renewed push to end the killing
in Darfur and an administration drive to prevent a North Korean missile
test.
"There's just enormous goodwill and optimism," Rice told POLITICO. "I'd say
even excessive expectations about President Obama and what his
administration can bring."
Rice also forcefully rejected what has emerged as an early knock on Obama's
foreign policy: that his team, notably Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
has appeared to downplay human rights concerns, from China to Turkey to
Egypt, in favor of more practical issues.
"The whole point is we need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same
time. We don't have the luxury of viewing every issue, every country, every
challenge in black-and-white terms. That was, in my opinion, part of the
fallacy of the Bush administration," she said. "But there are ways and means
of accomplishing that. It's not always in every instance most productive to
do it on a huge stage beating a drum — sometimes it is."
"Whether it's Russia or Egypt or China or Zimbabwe, strong advocacy for
human rights and democracy will be part of our approach."
Rice is, in the meantime, settling into what one of her predecessors,
Madeleine Albright, described to POLITICO as "one of the all-time great jobs
— especially if you are working for a president who believes in having an
approach that recognizes the importance of other countries." An assistant
secretary of state for African Affairs under President Bill Clinton, Rice
was an early foreign policy adviser to Obama.
Albright has known her since Rice was a child, when she served on a school
board with Rice's mother. She praised in particular one of the ambassador's
early moves — re-establishing her Mission's Washington presence with a
nine-person staff at the State Department — and dismissed suggestions that
the move riled Secretary Clinton as "made up."
Back in New York, Rice already has hosted a round of receptions for nearly
every other U.N. ambassador (the old "axis of evil" is still out) at the
ambassador's traditional residence at the Waldorf, and she has installed
herself in the substantially less glamorous, faded office at the mission's
temporary East Side headquarters.
Rice admitted to enjoying the grand Waldorf quarters, though they can be
"pretty big and hollow if you're rattling around there by yourself." Her
husband, an ABC News producer, and her children remain in Washington. Her
11-year-old son "wants to know what the Libyans are doing this week," while
her daughter, 6, is a bit less of a wonk.
"When she's trying to jack me up, she calls me 'Ambassador Momma,'" Rice
said.
Rice said she's setting into the Ambassador's traditional routine of
high-gloss — but also very practical -— dinners at the residences of other
Security Council members and dignitaries. The ambassador is sometimes a bit
of a New York society figure, and Rice places herself somewhere between
former Ambassadors Richard Holbrooke, a prince of the dinner party circuit,
and John Bolton, a U.N. critic who turned in early and spent as little time
as possible in New York.
"On the glitz glam spectrum, I'm not at the Holbrooke end," she said, "and I
don't put myself on anything with John Bolton."
Rice's predilection for straight talk and the occasional sharp elbow,
though, has just a touch of Bolton — though Bolton made himself particularly
unwelcome at the international body by joking that it would make no
difference if the U.N. headquarters "lost 10 stories."
Bolton sneered at the decision to rejoin the Human Rights Council as
"genuflecting" to the fantasy that mere American presence would make a
difference.
Rice dismissed that criticism.
"We have a record of abject failure from having stayed out. We've been out
for the duration and it has not gotten better. It's arguably gotten worse,"
she said. "We are much better placed to be fighting for the principles we
believe in — protection of human rights universally, fighting against the
anti-Israel crap and for meaningful action on issues that we care about and
ought to be the top of the agenda, things like Zimbabwe, Sudan [and] Burma —
by leading and lending our voice from within."
A similar logic is at play with the anti-racism conference, scheduled for
April 20 in Geneva, the successor to a 2001 conference in Durban, South
Africa, that featured sharp condemnations of Israel. The U.S. delegation
pulled out of preparatory talks for the conference after negotiators
produced a 63-page draft text that featured more condemnation of Israel and
demands for reparations for the slave trade.
That withdrawal seemed to prove the Bush administration's point. "While we
got a lot of love, we didn't get any progress on the document," Rice said of
the early talks, calling the draft "rife with anti-Israeli and other
problematic substance" and "not a credible basis for a responsible outcome."
Since then, however, an American willingness to return to the table has been
met with deep concessions and a new, 17-page draft has that dropped all
reference to Israel, though there is still tension over a line reaffirming
the outcome of the previous meeting in Durban. "We haven't taken a decision
about our participation or actual involvement in the negotiations at this
stage, [but] we're pleased that this document has substantially improved and
is already much better. But [it] has a remaining significant problem," Rice
said.
If the Durban outcome is an early signal that Obama-style diplomacy can bear
results, the ongoing violence in Darfur is grimmer, with no resolution in
sight. Rice declined to talk about the situation in detail because a
presidential envoy, Scott Gration, is currently in the region. But she said
the U.S. is currently working to bolster confidence in a north-south peace
agreement, which she described as essential to confidence in a separate
agreement between the government and Darfurian rebels.
She also said the notion of a no-fly zone, which some human rights advocates
support, remains "under consideration," though the immediate effort focuses
on reversing the expulsion of aid groups, which exacerbates "what was
already a massive amount of killing and genocide."
"As the [Sudanese] government has demonstrated, there's a lot it can do
quickly unilaterally, and the international community has to decide what's
the best leverage to change its behavior," she said.
Rice also said she would continue to work on a favored Bush administration
cause, improving the function of the United Nations, though perhaps in a
different spirit.
"They didn't invent U.N. reform — they gave it a bad name, but they didn't
invent it," Rice said of her predecessors. "This is an institution that,
despite its evident flaws, we are much better off having function
effectively."
© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC
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