Financial Times - January 8, 2009
Obama picks Ross as Mideast envoy By Daniel Dombey in Washington
Dennis Ross, a former top diplomat for the George H W Bush and Clinton administrations, will become the Obama administration’s top envoy on the Middle East, an internal email from Mr Ross’s current employer has revealed.
Mr Ross, who previously served as the US envoy for the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, is set to take a wider role as Hillary Clinton’s top adviser for the Middle East as a whole. Ms Clinton herself is due to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for her confirmation hearing for Secretary of State next Tuesday.
Executives at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the think- tank where Mr Ross works, told the organisation’s board that Mr Ross had “accepted an invitation to join the Obama administration as ambassador-at-large” in a job “designed especially for him,” covering a range of issues from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to Iran.
The email, first reported by Chris Nelson, a Washington-based foreign policy expert, adds that Mr Ross “will not reprise his previous role as special Arab-Israeli peace envoy, a post that will be held by someone else; rather he will be working closely with both the special envoy and the secretary.”
Mr Ross is likely to strike a high profile in his new job, particularly given the current Gaza conflict and mounting fears about Iran’s nuclear capacity. He served as an adviser on the Middle East to president-elect Barack Obama during the election campaign, calling for bigger carrots and bigger sticks to dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons capacity.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a news organisation, reported this week that Mr Ross told a meeting at a synagogue this week that if Hamas had ”the capability to rearm” the current conflict would serve as “just a prelude” to the next round.
The agency reported that Mr Ross said achieving an Israeli-Palestinian agreement would now be harder than the previous attempt with which he was involved in 2000, partly because the Israeli public did not believe such an agreement was possible.
However people close to Mr Ross maintain he was volunteering more of a description of Israeli thinking than an analysis of the US position on the conflict.
The incoming Obama administration is expected to appoint a number of special envoys, likely to include Richard Holbrooke, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, who is expected to cover issues including Afghanistan and Pakistan.