The WP profiles Chris Hill, the veteran US diplomat who steered the shift in US North Korea policy "from confrontation to accomodation."

In the twilight of the Bush presidency, the nuclear agreement that Hill has tirelessly pursued over the past three years has emerged as Bush's best hope for a lasting foreign policy success. In the process, Hill has become the public face of an extraordinary 180-degree policy shift on North Korea. [...]

The normally loquacious Hill declined to comment for this article, as did Rice. But when asked in a podcast last month about his dealings with "Cheneyland," he acknowledged the strain and marveled at the emotions North Korea provokes in the capital.

"I have never seen people around tables in Washington get so angry about this subject," Hill told Christopher Lydon, a fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute, in the podcast on April 25. "I understand why people get emotional about this. But my job is to try to stay on task here. . . . If giving speeches in Washington would solve this, we'd just stay in Washington and give speeches."

Hill added: "I've got to tell you, I don't feel abandoned by Secretary Rice and President Bush. They have been big supporters."

Rice speaks to Hill as many as seven times a day while he is negotiating, to keep close tabs on the precise language in draft documents. But Hill also has sometimes taken procedural shortcuts to leave his internal opponents out of the loop. And he has rebuilt his initial negotiating team, weeding out potential spies for his rivals by replacing them with a tightknit group of technical experts.

Hill has a wry sense of humor and a blunt, informal style that officials say appeals to Bush. He has spent three decades in the Foreign Service, and he caught Bush's eye when the Polish president, a favorite of Bush's, lavishly praised Hill's performance as ambassador to Poland. Later, as ambassador to South Korea, he eased tensions in U.S.-Korean relations through frequent speeches and debates with U.S. critics.

But Hill is at heart a dealmaker. During the Clinton administration, he was a key negotiator for the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the Bosnian war, and played an important role in dealing with the Kosovo crisis. His mentor in both jobs was former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who taught him how to handle the media and push the bounds of his official negotiating instructions to get a deal. [...]

I got to observe Hill, then US ambassador to Macedonia managing the emerging Kosovo crisis, and his brother, then a political officer at the US embassy in Belgrade, a bit from the sidelines and in a few interviews in the Balkans in the late 1990s, when I was stringing for what was basically their hometown paper, the Boston Globe; as I remember they were Navy brats from Rhode Island. Smart, alert, politically savvy, and certainly a media savvy pragmatist, Chris Hill especially considered among the most capable diplomats of his generation, I continue to hear from his colleagues, as evident here:

In perhaps his biggest coup, Hill convinced Rice and Bush that the top priority is to get ahold of North Korea's stash of plutonium, and that other issues are secondary. In Bush's first term, the administration had accused North Korea of having an uranium-enrichment program, which led to the breakdown of a 1994 agreement that kept Pyongyang from separating plutonium to make nuclear warheads.

The uranium-enrichment issue has faded in importance because the original intelligence was overstated. In changing gears, the president has acknowledged that his previous approach was a mistake.

Leddy said that last fall, when China first proposed separating the plutonium issue from other concerns in North Korea's nuclear declaration, she saw a White House document describing the idea with the notation "President says No." But that is precisely the deal Hill struck last month. ...

The article doesn't mention Hill's future plans, that I saw. But it sounds like Hill is due for a promotion or, having advanced almost as far as you can in the foreign service, will get out, which his domestic enemies on the right seeking a more confrontational stance towards Pyongyang would no doubt prefer. The recent Hill interview the Post references with Chris Lydon now at Brown's Watson Center in Providence makes me wonder if Hill is contemplating a run for office from Rhode Island.

Posted by Laura at May 26, 2008 06:12 PM