Diplomats

President Obama has taken painstaking care in the first days of his administration to calm the waters of international relations with promises of cooperation and respect for other nations. But his new envoy to South Asia has landed with a splash. Officials in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India have reacted uneasily to the appointment of Richard Holbrooke, a veteran diplomat nicknamed "the Bulldozer."

President Obama dispatched his special Middle East envoy on his inaugural peacemaking trip Monday, declaring that former Sen. George J. Mitchell would speak for the White House in a search for "progress, not just photo ops." Obama's public appearance with Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was his second in five days and placed a strong emphasis on the peacemaking efforts, which come when many analysts rate the chances for Arab-Israeli peace as the worst in decades.

A U.S. diplomat and his driver were fatally shot early Tuesday in Khartoum, the capital of war-torn Sudan, U.S. officials said. John Granville, 33, who grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., worked for the United States Agency for International Development. Reports indicated that Granville was shot four or five times while being driven home about 4 a.m., suffering wounds in the abdomen, hand and left shoulder. He died several hours later at a hospital, U.S. officials said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reproached a presidential envoy Tuesday for predicting that North Korea would not bow to pressure from the United States and its allies to disclose full details of its nuclear program. In an unusually sharp tone, Rice said that Jay Lefkowitz, Bush's special envoy to North Korea on human rights, was not speaking for the administration Thursday when he predicted that Pyongyang would hold on to its nuclear weapons. In talks involving six countries, U.S.

Iraqi Kurds, among America's staunchest supporters, condemned the detention early Thursday of six Iranian diplomats during a raid by U.S. forces on the Iranian Consulate in the Kurdish city of Irbil. The Kurdish president and the regional government released a statement calling for the release of the six. The U.S. military said one of the diplomats was freed. "The U.S.

The top U.S. envoy to Iraq said Wednesday that he would soon reveal details he asserted would show Iranian interference in the country, in the latest round of diplomatic jousting between Washington and Tehran. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told a group of Western journalists that American officials would provide details "in the coming days" about Iranian officials detained and interrogated in Baghdad and the Kurdish city of Irbil within the last month. The U.S.

Zimbabwe's state-run newspaper appeared to threaten a British diplomat whom it accused of supporting government opponents, suggesting on its front page that she could be welcomed home "in a body bag" if she persisted. Britain immediately summoned the Zimbabwean ambassador in London to explain the article in the Herald, calling the threats "shocking and absolutely unacceptable."

An Iranian diplomat seized in Iraq two months ago has been freed, the Iraqi government said Tuesday. The envoy, Jalal Sharafi, was welcomed by senior Iranian officials at the airport in Tehran, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported.

The U.N.'s envoy to the Middle East, Alvaro de Soto, plans to leave the post in May, and diplomats said Tuesday that the world body was considering options that include naming a special envoy jointly with its "quartet" partners. Members of the quartet -- the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- are drafting proposals to try to spur negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government ordered the expulsion of four Russian diplomats Monday over the Kremlin's refusal to extradite the key suspect in the fatal poisoning of a former KGB spy. Alexander Litvinenko died Nov. 23 in a London hospital after ingesting radioactive polonium-210. In a deathbed statement, the 43-year-old accused Russian President Vladimir V. Putin of being behind his killing.