Oh, and that was a "proxy war with the Soviet Union"?
New US ambassador to Iraq known for savvy silence 1 hour, 40 minutes ago Add Mideast - AFP to My Yahoo!
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - John Negroponte, who was named to be the first US ambassador to Iraq (news - web sites) since the ouster of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), has a reputation as a loyal, effective diplomat who delivers maximum results with minimum flash.
The savvy, soft-spoken Negroponte will head the largest US embassy in the world, in charge of 3,000 staff, as the eyes of the world focus on the United States and its plans for the future of Iraq.
Negroponte made his diplomatic name in Vietnam, dazzling foreign service colleagues by learning the language so well that Henry Kissinger selected him to head secret US negotiations under President Richard Nixon.
But his career history posed problems when Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) lured him from retirement to be ambassador to the United Nations (news - web sites), as questions emerged about his role in Central America at the height of the Cold War.
Born in London in 1939 to a Greek tycoon, Negroponte got an early taste of the international lifestyle in a childhood spent in Britain, Switzerland and the United States.
Schooling at the elite Exeter Academy and then Yale University left him well prepared for his marriage to socialite Diana Villiers, whose father was the former chairman of British Steel.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) picked the urbane Negroponte as ambassador to Honduras as the United States fought a bitter and controversial proxy war against the Soviet Union in neighbouring Nicaragua.
Reagan's support for the rebels who fought the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua led to the Iran-Contra scandal, which came closer than anything else to bringing down his presidency.
Critics said the multilingual Negroponte's most fluent language was silence, accusing him of overseeing the arming of Nicaragua's Contra rebels while turning a blind eye to murder and torture by the Honduran military regime.
That history came back to haunt him after Powell tempted him to resign a lucrative executive position with a prominent US publisher and accept the post at the United Nations in 2001.
At testy Senate hearings on his nomination, current presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) said Negroponte's role in Central America should be "carefully and thoroughly examined."
But before the partisan bickering of Capitol Hill could block his candidacy, the September 11, 2001 attacks changed the political landscape of the United States. The US Senate confirmed his appointment within days.
At the United Nations, Negroponte represented the United States on the Security Council as Washington won international support for the war on Afghanistan (news - web sites) -- but could not do so last year on Iraq.
Negroponte found himself at odds with almost all of his fellow diplomats, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), who was unusually outspoken in his criticism of the war.
In what some here saw as a delicious ironic twist, Negroponte will now find himself needing Annan's assistance in Iraq little more than a year after US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) said the world body was all but irrelevant.
The UN chief, in true diplomatic form, had nothing but praise for Negroponte last week. "He's an outstanding professional, a great diplomat and a wonderful ambassador here," Annan said.