Richard Holbrooke

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."

Former Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke negotiated an end to a Balkan war, helped normalize relations with China and advanced American interests as envoy to the United Nations. But now he faces a diplomatic test like none before: persuading President-elect Barack Obama and his team to give him the prized job of secretary of State. Holbrooke is among those under consideration to be America's top diplomat.

Bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan will be much tougher than in Iraq, the newly appointed U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan said Sun- day. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Richard Holbrooke said he had never in his political career seen any situation as difficult as that of Pakistan and Afghanistan. "In my view, it's going to be much tougher than Iraq," said Holbrooke, who will travel to the region this week. Holbrooke was in Munich as part of a high-level U.S.

President Obama's new envoy to Afghanistan met with President Hamid Karzai on Saturday amid a downturn in U.S.-Afghan relations and an upswing in militant violence. Karzai says he still has not spoken with the new U.S. president almost a month after his inauguration, a sign that Karzai no longer enjoys the favored status he had under former President Bush. "There is tension between us and the U.S.

An Afghan delegation will join a U.S.-led policy review of the war in the region, President Hamid Karzai and U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke announced Sunday. Karzai and Holbrooke were overtly cordial to each other in a 13-minute media briefing at which neither took questions. Holbrooke allowed Karzai to announce that President Obama had approved the request for the Afghan delegation. Holbrooke also said the U.S. supported the announcement of the Aug.

The American envoy's armed convoy rumbled through the dusty streets of Kabul, stopping at one polling place, then another, as Afghans voted in their first contested presidential election. In the August heat, Richard C. Holbrooke watched the balloting, his satisfaction tinged with concern. Widespread violence had been averted. But the integrity of the election, so vital to American plans, had yet to be proved. Mingling with people and sampling pastry sold by some children on a corner, Holbrooke said the process appeared "peaceful and orderly," but warned as he squinted at one of the complicated punch cards that "the test comes when people count the ballots."

U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke confronted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, delivering what could be the final warning before NATO tries to end the fighting in Kosovo by force. The visit to the capital by Holbrooke, a trouble-shooter for the Balkans and the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is seen as a last attempt to get Milosevic to stop his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in the secessionist Serbian province. Holbrooke is to travel to Kosovo today.

President Clinton has named Bill Richardson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to be Energy secretary and will name veteran diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke to the U.N. post, administration officials said Wednesday. Both appointments have been rumored for weeks. The officials said Clinton will make the formal announcement today.

Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy whose robust diplomacy forged a peace agreement in Bosnia-Herzegovina, has a tough-guy image, but he revealed a sentimental side during a Rose Garden ceremony Thursday in which he was nominated as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Apparently choking back tears, he spoke of his late father's great respect for the United Nations. Holbrooke, 57, described how his father took him at age 8 to the then-newly completed United Nations building in New York.