Khalilzad Changes Approach From Hawk to Bridge-Builder

UNITED NATIONS -- At his residence at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, Zalmay Khalilzad displays a banged-up AK-47 assault rifle from Saddam Hussein's arsenal: a souvenir from a war Khalilzad supported and a regime he helped topple.

Khalilzad's supporters say his stints as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations have taught him that the go-it-alone strategy of his neoconservative allies had run its course. "He's a neocon who got mugged by reality," said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat who advised Iraqi Kurds after the fall of Hussein.

But Khalilzad's diplomatic style has rankled subordinates, who describe him as a disorganized manager. As ambassador in Kabul, he infuriated staffers by recruiting U.S. executives to help run Afghan ministries. Former staff members have criticized him for keeping colleagues in the dark. "Zal would talk to [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai two or three times a day without an interpreter and never write a record of the meeting," said Hillary Mann Leverett, Flynt Leverett's spouse and former Afghanistan director at the National Security Council.
Khalilzad Changes Approach From Hawk to Bridge-Builder ...