December 04, 2008	Thursday	Zilhaj 5, 1429

WASHINGTON, Dec 3: US President-elect Barack Obama is considering naming veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke his special envoy to South Asia, officials said.

While his chief spokeswoman for national security, Brooke Anderson, did not deny reports that Mr Holbrooke is being considered, she said that Mr Obama would not interfere in the Bush administration’s efforts to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan. “There is one president at a time and we intend to respect that,” she said.

The Bush administration has sent its top diplomat — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – and top military official — Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen — to the region.

The Washington Post observed that Mr Holbrooke’s appointment would “put one of America’s most prominent international troubleshooters in the middle of trying to resolve the thorny and interrelated problems surrounding India, Pakistan and Afghanistan”.

The Time magazine described Mr Holbrooke as “smart and effective but also hard to control and outspoken” and said that as special envoy he would be expected to do “troubleshooting” in a difficult and complex region.

The Foreign Policy magazine observed that Mr Holbrooke had strong views on issues concerning South Asia.

“He supports democracy in Pakistan. He thinks the war in Afghanistan will eventually become the longest in American history,” said one of the editors of the prestigious magazine on its blog called Foreign Policy Passport.

In a recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine, Mr Holbrooke called for a regional diplomatic strategy towards Afghanistan involving Iran, China, India, and Russia. He wants tough conditions on aid to Hamid Karzai’s government, which he views as weak. He says the national police are “Afghanistan’s most corrupt institution”.

Various US media outlets, while reporting on Mr Holbrooke’s possible selection noted that while the Bush administration wanted to head off a conflict between India and Pakistan and keep the Pakistani government focussed on its border with Afghanistan, Mr Obama sought to intensify military efforts to dislodge Al Qaeda from that area.

They pointed out that in recent statements Mr Obama had also stressed the need to resolve the Kashmir dispute and the appointment of a heavyweight US envoy for South Asia would indicate that the president-elect was serious about pursuing this goal.

But they warned that such a move would be “fraught with complications”. They noted that While Pakistan had long called for an outside mediator to solve the territorial dispute; India had never accepted the idea of an intermediary, insisting it was a bilateral issue with Pakistan.

Mr Holbrooke hammered out the Dayton accords that ended the war in Bosnia in the 1990s and later served as United Nations ambassador under President Bill Clinton.