WASHINGTON: US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick announced his resignation yesterday to join investment house Goldman Sachs, after focusing on China and Sudan in the No. 2 job at the department.
Zoellick had been tipped as a candidate for treasury secretary but he was passed over for the job which went to Goldman Sachs chairman Henry “Hank” Paulson.
With Zoellick at her side, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid tribute to her outgoing deputy as a strategist and an intellectual leader.
She did not announce a replacement for Zoellick when he leaves next month, and State Department officials said it was undecided whether his successor would be the point person on China and Sudan.
Last month, Zoellick played a pivotal role in getting the main rebel groups in Sudan’s western Darfur region to sign a peace agreement after talks had dragged on for years. He had made several trips to the region.
Darfur activists voiced concern his successor might not devote as much time to the issue and they urged the Bush administration to appoint a special envoy for Darfur.
“More than anyone else he (Zoellick) has moved this forward and come up with tangible results. It is a matter of concern when one of the administration’s point people decides to leave,” said Alex Meixner of the Save Darfur Coalition, an alliance of groups that raises public awareness about Darfur.
A candidate to succeed Zoellick has not yet been identified but Rice’s top aid official, Randall Tobias, could be among those on a short list, said one official.
“Bob has been greater than ever, whenever we have faced challenges,” Rice said of Zoellick, adding he was willing to “get up his courage and roll up his sleeves and even occasionally hug a panda.”
Zoellick has a reputation as a demanding detail man, and can appear stiff in public, but he has been teased in the Bush administration for a widely published photograph of him holding a baby panda in China.
For several months, Zoellick has been speaking to Wall Street firms about a position. He said he would join the world’s top investment bank, Goldman Sachs.
Zoellick told wire-service reporters he would help his new firm with strategies for expanding in international markets, chair its international advisory group and represent investors.
He denied reports he told the White House he would leave the administration if not given the post of treasury secretary.
“If you’re someone like me who is interested in public service those are attractive possibilities, but no one ever said to me this is a job you could have. I certainly knew I’d always be a contender as the president and others told me, but as I said if I were the president and I had a choice in Hank Paulson, I’d pick Hank Paulson,” Zoellick said.
“So there was never any sense of like I must get this or I’m going to do that,” he added.
Before joining the State Department, Zoellick was US Trade Representative from 2001, where he completed negotiations to bring China and Taiwan into the World Trade Organisation.
Much of his focus at the State Department was also on China, whose military build-up and growing economic muscle has strained ties between the two superpowers. – Reuters
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