Rice Taps Longtime Colleagues for Inner Circle

· Philip D. Zelikow , 50, counselor, is tasked by Rice to confront major foreign policy issues and conduct special international negotiations. Zelikow, a University of Virginia professor, is a longtime Rice associate who co-wrote a book with Rice about the tumultuous period of German reunification during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.

Zelikow was executive director of the Sept. 11 Commission, which gave Rice some of her most uncomfortable moments of the first term. As executive director, he was widely considered by the staff to be smart, tireless, arrogant and at times abrasive. He has played a vital role in crafting the State Department strategy to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan while building a relationship with India. Zelikow's approach appears to have worked, though some people in lower-level bureaus felt left out.

· Brian Gunderson , 43, chief of staff, spends a great deal of time on legislative affairs, drawing on his Capitol Hill experience. Gunderson is at Rice's side when she has breakfast with members of Congress, and he spearheaded State's strategy for the contentious nomination of John R. Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations. Gunderson also focuses on personnel issues, including helping to select ambassadors.

· Jim Wilkinson , 34, senior adviser, specializes in strategic planning and policy communications. Wilkinson, previously deputy national security adviser in the White House, oversees Rice's schedule in Washington, her travel overseas, speechwriting and the selling of foreign policy decisions. He has proved to be critical to Rice's style and media-savvy during her early tenure at State, though his aggressiveness has rubbed some department denizens the wrong way. On Rice's first overseas trip, reporters gave him a figurine of a Whirling Dervish in joking admiration of his constant presence.

· R. Nicholas Burns , 49, undersecretary of state for political affairs, the number three position, oversees the regional bureaus, which constitute the political heart of the department. A career foreign service officer, Burns became close to Rice when he was her deputy as they worked on policy toward the Soviet Union in George H.W. Bush's White House. He also was a key aide on Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union to President Bill Clinton and the spokesman for former secretaries of state Warren M. Christopher and Madeleine Albright. Burns was ambassador to NATO in Bush's first term.

· John Bellinger , 45, legal adviser, was Rice's chief legal adviser at the NSC and co-managed her transition team. He also prepared Rice and Bolton for their confirmation hearings. Bellinger turned down an offer of an office on the prestigious seventh floor, preferring to stay with the legal team on the sixth floor.

· Stephen D. Krasner , 62, director of policy planning. This was once one of the most powerful positions at State, and Rice has tasked her former Stanford University colleague to beef it up and bolster its impact on policy decisions. He is focused on Rice's interest in expanding democracy across the Middle East.

· R. Steve Beecroft , 46, executive assistant, is a career foreign service officer who speaks Arabic and is the one holdover from the Powell era. Beecroft manages the paper flow into Rice's office, a critical position that is reserved for rising stars in the State Department.