Gates to stay - report
2008-11-26 07:46
Washington - US Defence Secretary
Robert Gates has agreed to stay on under President-elect Barack
Obama and retired Marine General James Jones will be named
national security adviser, the Politico news website said on
Tuesday.
Politico, quoting officials in both the Democratic and
Republican parties, said the announcements would be made early
next week when Obama unveils his national security team
including New York Senator Hillary Clinton as nominee for
secretary of state.
The website said Democrats familiar with the transition
plans expected James Steinberg, a former deputy national
security adviser in the Clinton administration, to be named
deputy secretary of state.
Officials at Obama's transition office had no immediate
comment on the report.
It was unclear whether negotiations between Obama and Gates
had produced a final agreement, with some sources saying there
were still outstanding issues to be settled.
A senior Democratic source told Reuters that Obama intends
to ask Gates to remain and that Gates was likely to do so. But
the source said Gates was still discussing which of his team he
would keep in place under the Obama administration.
A second source knowledgeable about the defence transition
also said he did not believe Gates's future was set.
"There's an 85% chance he's going to stay," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no formal announcement had been made.
The source said Gates would be unlikely to remain in the
job for less than a year but was concerned about becoming a
"lame duck" defence chief if a timetable were placed on his stay.
"There are also issues about who he can keep on his staff
and who his deputy's going to be. There are a lot of Democrats who want to assume senior positions at the Pentagon and don't want to be left out in the cold," the source said.
UN ambassador
Susan Rice, another of Obama's inner circle of foreign
policy advisers, was expected to be named US ambassador to
the United Nations and retired Navy Adm Dennis Blair would be
named director of national intelligence, Politico said.
Other news outlets including ABC and Fox also reported that
Gates would stay on at the Pentagon, which had been widely
suggested as a possibility.
A former CIA director, Gates was president of Texas A&M
University when President George W Bush asked him to take over
the US Department of Defence from the combative Donald
Rumsfeld in late 2006.
Gates, now 65, set about putting things back on an even
keel with a low-key approach that sought to build constructive
relationships but also betrayed a steely firmness of purpose in
the two US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Jones, a former Marine commandant and leader of US and
Nato forces in Europe, had also been seen as among the
front-runners for the national security adviser role.
Jones is known to have been a strong critic of the Bush
administration's handling of the Iraq war.
In Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward's 2006 book
State of Denial, Jones is quoted as describing the Iraq war as a "debacle".
Obama this week unveiled a string of senior appointments in
his economic team, including New York Federal Reserve President
Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary and Lawrence Summers, a
Treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton, as head
of the National Economic Council.