WASHINGTON – Retired diplomat Marc Grossman will replace late Richard Holbrooke as US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, The Washington Post reported. The Post said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would announce the appointment in a major speech on the embattled region on Friday at the Asia Society in New York, or before.
It said months of disagreements between the White House and the State Department over the parameters of the job had delayed the announcement. A veteran at the State Department, where he developed a career over nearly three decades, Grossman has served as assistant secretary of state for Europe and ambassador to Turkey. His last post before retiring from the foreign service in 2005 was undersecretary for political affairs under former president George W Bush’s first term in office.
He currently serves as vice president of the Cohen Group, a consulting firm. Although the group has several clients with contracts in South Asia, officials told the Post they did not see that as an obstacle to Grossman’s appointment. Grossman would step in at a critical time for the Washington’s war strategy in Afghanistan, with plans to begin withdrawing US troops this summer.
Afghan forces are due to take responsibility for security from 2014, allowing international troops to pull back. And strained US ties with Pakistan have reached a new low after Islamabad balked at US demands to grant diplomatic immunity to an American official facing murder charges in the country. High-level talks between the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan have been postponed amid the diplomatic spat and US lawmakers have threatened to cut payments to Islamabad, the beneficiary of $7.5 billion dollars of aid and $2 billion in military aid.
