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Christopher Hill, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
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Although only a mid-level foreign service official, chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill "has become the public face of an extraordinary 180-degree policy shift on North Korea," the Washington Post reported on Monday.
In a feature story titled "Mid-Level Official Steered U.S. Shift On North Korea," the Post said, "In the twilight of the (George W. 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."
The newspaper said, "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." The newspaper credited Hill with persuading Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to jump-start talks with the regime. "If you just let me go to Pyongyang, I'll get you a deal," he repeatedly told Rice early in President Bush's second term in 2005, the newspaper wrote.
According to the report, Hill has had "unusual access" to the president for a mid-level official, even attending breakfast meetings that include Vice President Dick Cheney and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. "He has even had an occasional one-on-one chat with Bush."
"Through deft use of public appearances and the news media, Hill also has become an international figure in his own right," the newspaper said. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last year hailed him as a "diplomat par excellence" and Hill is a finalist along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Aga Khan for the Chatham House Prize, a prestigious British award for international diplomacy.
"One of the biggest guessing games in diplomatic circles today is how long Hill can keep up his balancing act of pleasing his bosses, negotiating with North Korea and fending off conservatives eager to see him fail," the Post wrote. Critics mockingly refer to him as "Kim Jong Hill", playing on the name of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, and say that he has been desperately trading concessions in order to keep the talks alive. "On the one hand, he is an effective negotiator," Victor Cha, a former director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council and Hill's deputy at the nuclear talks in 2006, told the newspaper. "But you can also view him as a media hog trying to be a hero."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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