Reich getting new role as Bush's Americas envoy

Posted on Wed, Jan. 08, 2003 By TIM JOHNSON and ANDRES OPPENHEIMER Miami Herald

BEING REASSIGNED: Otto Reich failed to win Senate approval as the State Department's top official in charge of Latin American affairs. MIGUEL ROJO/AFP FILE

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is expected to announce a reorganization of its Latin America policy team that will include the appointment of diplomat Otto Reich as a ''presidential envoy'' to the Americas, thus avoiding a confirmation battle with the Senate, administration officials said Tuesday.

The Cuban-born Reich, who had to step down last month as the State Department's top official in charge of Latin American affairs after failing to win Senate confirmation, would move to the White House and report directly to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, the officials said. The announcement could be made as early as this week, they said.

Replacing Reich at the State Department's top job in charge of Latin American affairs will be Roger Noriega, another political appointee currently serving as ambassador to the Organization of American States, the sources said. It was unclear whether Noriega himself would have difficulty being confirmed.

Noriega is a former Latin American affairs staffer for former Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., who retired last month.

Reich and Noriega are considered hard-liners on Cuba, and on several other Latin American issues. Reich, a former ambassador to Venezuela, had been effectively vetoed in the Senate by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and other Democrats who oppose the U.S. embargo on the island.

Ever since Reich's tenure at the State Department came to an end recently -- when he was obliged to step down by law because of a failure to win Senate approval -- it was unclear whether a new confirmation effort would be made this year.

The Bush administration decision to place Reich in a position that does not require Senate confirmation avoids the necessity of another battle in the Senate, where the outcome was uncertain even though Republicans control the chamber in the new Congress.

But Reich supporters saw it as a positive move nonetheless. ''It's a victory of the hard-liners,'' said one U.S. official.

Secretary of State Colin Powell is said to have wanted a career diplomat, U.S. ambassador to Colombia Anne Patterson, for the State Department Latin American affairs job. Well-placed State Department sources said Powell did not want to risk a fight with Congress -- where the administration will need every possible vote in the event of a war on Iraq -- over a lesser issue such as the Reich nomination.

The new position for Reich would amount to a somewhat diminished version of a ''presidential envoy'' office for Latin America created during the Clinton administration, and abolished by Bush.

Clinton tapped his boyhood friend and former chief of staff, Thomas ''Mack'' McLarty, to the Latin envoy post in 1996, giving him virtual Cabinet-level rank and an office in the West Wing of the White House. McLarty served until 1998.

Reich will have a small office and staff in a building adjacent to the White House, and will report to Rice, officials said. But supporters say he may play a powerful role because he will work close to Rice, and thus have potentially easy access to the Oval Office.

Press offices at both the State Department and White House said they could neither confirm nor deny any change in Reich's status.

Since the sudden end of Reich's State Department job, when he was given a temporary slot as Powell's ''special envoy'' to Latin America, Powell has kept him at arm's length.

Reich did not accompany Powell on a trip to Colombia Dec. 3-4, nor was he present at a White House meeting in mid-December with incoming Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who now heads South America's most powerful nation.

''Otto wasn't even in the room. He was the most senior official to have met with Lula but he wasn't asked to come,'' said a colleague ''disappointed'' at White House treatment of Reich.

On Monday, Reich did not attend a meeting Powell held with Oswaldo Payá, Cuba's leading opponent to Fidel Castro. But Reich met with Payá separately because he had a long-scheduled speech at the time of the meeting, said an official familiar with Reich's schedule.

Indeed, Reich's future in the government has been the subject of such a tug of war between the White House, the State Department and Congress, one source continued to express a measure of skepticism over the new appointment Tuesday.

''Until I hear somebody announce it standing on a podium with a seal on it, I won't believe it,'' said a close friend of Reich, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``We've heard so many things.''

Powell and the White House had sounded out Reich about taking several lesser jobs, sparking angry chatter on Spanish-language radio stations in Miami and complaints from leaders in the Cuban-American community that one of its most prominent members was being treated poorly by the Bush administration.

Reich was first asked if he wanted to represent the United States in Geneva as its human rights representative, a position that normally serves to criticize the Cuban government's poor human rights record, sources said. Later, he was approached about serving in the National Security Council to replace Elliott Abrams as senior director for democracy and human rights, after Abrams left to become director of Middle Eastern affairs. Reich declined both jobs because he considered them a step down.

Another staffer said Reich supporters want the White House to assign Reich policy issues that he can handle separately from John Maisto, the career diplomat who is assigned the Western Hemisphere portfolio at the National Security Council.

''You have to give him specific assignments like free-trade issues, or hemisphere security issues, or Cuba and Venezuela,'' said one staffer, who declined to speak on the record.