The Hindu : Blackwill's functioning under review?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 17, 2002

International

International

Blackwill's functioning under review?

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

New York May 16. The United States State Department is not responding in any substantive fashion to a report in The Washington Post that the American Ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, has been subject to review by the department's Inspector General's Office.

The paper, in its "In the Loop'' column on Wednesday said that the IG's office, following an on-site review, had said in a report that Mr. Blackwill received the lowest scores ever in terms of morale. The Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was "understood to be particularly unhappy about the persistently low morale in the India mission,'' the paper's Al Kamen said in his column. What was stressed in the newspaper report was that there had been no complaints that Mr. Blackwill had erred in policy matters.

"Everyone who knew him... and knows him now says he is a brilliant policy analyst who treats his staff like furniture,'' a source was quoted in the newspaper report. The paper also talks of two overseas publications which had earlier mentioned about Mr. Blackwill's style of functioning. The Far Eastern Economic Review said that staffers had complained about the Ambassador's "allegedly autocratic management style'' and that the "combative'' envoy "may soon be forced out of the high profile post he has held for just 10 months''.

But on Wednesday, the acting spokesperson at the State Department, Lynn Cassel, refused to be drawn into either the supposed goings-on in the American embassy in New Delhi or the IG's report.

"I have nothing relating to that report... I cannot speak on the report,'' Ms. Cassel said.

"Ambassador Blackwill is our Ambassador. I don't know anything about the morale at the embassy in New Delhi. I haven't been there. So it's just beyond my expertise,'' she remarked.

"...Rumours and unsubstantiated allegations that morale is bad here or there... I guess I just don't want to comment on any sort of unspecified or directed rumours,'' she maintained.

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