Zalmay Khalilzad

America's sometimes-freewheeling ambassador to the United Nations ran afoul of his superiors by taking part in unauthorized debate with two high-ranking Iranian officials during a conference of world leaders last week in the luxury Alpine resort of Davos, Switzerland.

The abrupt departure of John D. Negroponte as the nation's spy chief prompted angry responses from Capitol Hill and triggered new debate Thursday over whether a position created to fix the nation's intelligence problems is itself fundamentally flawed. President Bush is expected to announce today that Negroponte will become the top deputy at the State Department. Bush also is set to nominate retired Navy Vice Adm. J. Michael McConnell to be the next director of national intelligence.

ZALMAY KHALILZAD is not the kind of soft-spoken diplomat who goes over well at the United Nations. President Bush's choice for U.S. ambassador to the U.N., dubbed "the viceroy" during his stint as ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, is a neoconservative hawk known for his autocratic style. Yet he is also charismatic and can be charming; certainly compared to his predecessor, he's a breath of fresh air. Former Ambassador John R. Bolton was a spectacularly poor choice for the U.N.

President Bush intends to nominate Zalmay Khalilzad as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the White House announced Monday, signaling that Washington plans to work with the U.N. in a high-profile way, with a high-flying troubleshooter. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made the official announcement, which had been anticipated since last week, saying Khalilzad performed "heroically and at great personal risk" as the U.S.

This is what all of Iraq was supposed to look like four years after Saddam Hussein's fall: a construction boom of apartment blocks and commercial buildings, universities full of students, an airport with direct flights to Europe and the Middle East and visitors pouring in. Outgoing U.S.

With a final wave, departing U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad boarded a U.S. military helicopter and flew out of Baghdad on Monday, warning Iraqi leaders that they risk losing the support of impatient U.S. voters if they don't "step up" and make the tough decisions necessary to bring peace to the strife-torn nation.

The top U.S. envoy to Iraq said Monday that the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime had opened a "Pandora's box" of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions that could engulf the region in all-out war if America pulled out of the country too soon. In remarks that were among the frankest and bleakest public assessments of the Iraq situation by a high-level American official, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the "potential is there" for sectarian violence to become full-blown civil war.

The U.S. ambassador here on Monday urged war-weary Americans to dig in for the long haul: a years-long effort to transform Iraq and the surrounding region, now one of the world's major trouble spots. "We must perhaps reluctantly accept that we have to help this region become a normal region, the way we helped Europe and Asia in another era," Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. "Now it's this area from Pakistan to Morocco that we should focus on."

Zalmay Khalilzad usually starts work at 8 a.m. and doesn't rest for the next 16 hours or so, in a day that seems divided into stopwatch segments. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, the best-known American working in this war-torn nation, has alternately dazzled and discomfited observers with his hyper-interpersonal style, cultivating dozens of one-on-one relationships with Iraqi leaders.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Saturday that he supported the Iraqi prime minister's plan to disband sectarian militias through negotiations while using his military to go after the most extreme elements. Khalilzad said he disagreed with recent complaints by U.S. military officials in Iraq and politicians in Washington that Prime Minister Nouri Maliki hasn't been doing enough to rein in Shiite militias implicated in thousands of death squad killings. Khalilzad said complaints by senior U.