Frank Ricciardone

With the man who will coordinate U.S. efforts to destabilize Iraq at her side, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright completed a three-nation tour of friendly Arab countries Thursday, appealing for at least tacit support in the campaign to bring down Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. By introducing Frank Ricciardone to the leaders of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Albright stripped away any vestige of diplomatic ambiguity from Washington's anti-Hussein program.

With the man who will coordinate U.S. efforts to destabilize Iraq at her side, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright completed a three-nation tour of friendly Arab countries Thursday, appealing for at least tacit support in the campaign to bring down Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. By introducing Frank Ricciardone to the leaders of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Albright stripped away any vestige of diplomatic ambiguity from Washington's anti-Hussein program.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Thursday announced the appointment of a special U.S. envoy to Iraq's opposition with a mandate to coordinate the disparate array of groups trying to topple President Saddam Hussein. To deal with the leading opposition factions, Albright appointed Frank Ricciardone, a career diplomat now serving as deputy chief of mission in Ankara, the Turkish capital.

The senior envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan sought Friday to dispel suggestions that he had been sidelined during dramatic diplomacy in Afghanistan because of his stormy relationship with the Afghan president. Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke acknowledged that he had been in Washington, rather than Kabul, last weekend as Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and other senior U.S. officials pressured a reluctant Karzai to agree to a runoff election, which has been scheduled for Nov. 7. Holbrooke, in a State Department news conference, said he had remained in Washington to take part in deliberations on whether to overhaul the U.S. strategy and send thousands more troops to Afghanistan.

As children walked to the school next door, a suicide bomber detonated a car laden with explosives Wednesday outside a police station here, killing at least two people and injuring dozens in the latest attack on symbols of authority in this country, Iraqi police said. The assault came on a day when U.S. forces announced the capture near the city of Ramadi of former Baath Party leader Khamis Sirhan Mohammed.

The government, scrambling to assemble one of the world's largest embassies amid the violence and chaos of Iraq, is grappling with problems in staffing, financing and security. Since January, the State Department has been trying to build a team of hundreds of diplomats, as well as specialists from other agencies and support staff -- some pulled hastily from other overseas postings -- to help rebuild a nation in the midst of war.