Names: Latin America, NEA, and DoD

Posted By Laura Rozen Thursday, February 12, 2009 - 4:33 AM Share

Latin America: Sources tell The Cable that former Clinton-era NSC official Arturo Valenzuela is likely to be tapped as assistant secretary for Western hemispheric affairs, but that he is not expected to take up the post until after the spring semester ends. Valenzuela, professor and director of Georgetown University’s Center for Latin American Studies, did not respond to a query.

Still undecided is who will get the job of NSC senior director on Latin America. Among the top contenders, Latin America watchers tell The Cable, former NSC official and veteran CIA analyst Fulton Armstrong, now an aide to Sen. Chris Dodd, and Dan Restrepo, a former aide to Lee Hamilton (an informal Obama advisor) on the House International Relations Committee now with the Center for American Progress. Neither could be reached for comment. Armstrong’s bid is said to be complicated by bureaucratic rules involving drawing a government pension while taking an executive branch salary.

NEA: Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman is slated to to get the A/S NEA job, sources say. Feltman, a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon said to be well liked by colleagues in the bureau, declined to comment.

DoD: Colin Kahl, a professor at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, has been tapped to become the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. In the position, he will help shape Defense Department policy on Iraq, Iran, and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Vikram Singh, also a fellow at CNAS and a former aide in the office of the assistant secretary of defense for global security affairs, is slated to take a job at DoD advising on Afghanistan and Pakistan issues. CNAS co-founder Michèle Flournoy was confirmed earlier this week by the Senate as undersecretary of defense for policy.

On Tuesday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs announced that Flournoy would cochair with U.S. special representative Richard Holbrooke a review panel on U.S. policy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, in coordination with veteran NSC and CIA official Bruce Riedel. Riedel, currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served as the senior lead to the Obama campaign's South Asia foreign policy team, would take a 60-day leave to conduct the review, and will report directly to President Obama and national security advisor James L. Jones, Gibbs said.

(1)

HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE

SPECIALENVOY

5:45 AM ET

February 18, 2009

These AFG-PAK Experts should be consulted

Richard Holbrooke--just recently hired an Iranian for the Afg-Pak problem. bad move.

The usual gang of academics (Barnett Rubin, Ahmed Rashid, etc) that circulate from administration to administration are good but should be handled with care. They don't know more than State/INR, Pentagon's J-5 Council of Colonels, DIA Afg-Pak Analytical Cells, and the Agency's NESA and targeting analysts.

Holbrooke should reach out beyond this group -- to people like experienced veterans of the Afghan-Pakistan affairs with a background in government and academic like Rich Smyth (at the U.S. Army War College), retired Ambassador Peter Tomsen (Special Envoy to the Afghan Resistance, who knows all of the big players in Afghanistan), Mir Hekmat Sadat (an Afghan-American scholar and practioner at State Dept and one of the War Colleges), Nancy Dupree (she's in Kabul and if you don't know her then you are should not be working the Afghan portfolio--try Uganda), Mike Metrinko (at the US Army War College, he was the political afffairs brain of the US Embassy in Kabul and actually opened up the embassy after a 20 year hiatus), and Ambassador Mike Malinowski (served DCM to Afghanistan during the late 1970s and also as General Consul in Peshawar and knows all of the top and middle players in Pakistan, India and most importantly Afghanistan).