Iraq Rebuilding Critic Joins State Dept.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives for a secret Senate briefing on Iraq, Thursday, March 1, 2007 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook) (Dennis Cook - AP)

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided to appoint a leading critic of the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq as a senior aide, the State Department said Friday.

Deputy spokesman Tom Casey said that Eliot Cohen, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, will replace Philip Zelikow as counselor of the department.

"I have general knowledge of American foreign policy and a willingness to speak my mind," along with experience and contacts at the Pentagon, Cohen said in an interview.

"That relationship is not always an easy one," despite the many ways that the military and diplomats have to work together, Cohen said.

The appointment of Cohen, a conservative, follows the departure from the Bush administration of U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and arms control under secretary Bob Joseph, both known for their hawkish views.

Rice has drawn criticism from some conservatives for approving a multilateral agreement on Feb. 13 that is designed to lead to the dismantling of the North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Michael Ledeen, a former government official and conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said Cohen's appointment was good news.

"You want your leaders to hear disagreements," he said. "You don't want monotonous conformity."

In congressional testimony in October 2002, Cohen voiced support for military action against Iraq. Three years later, he said he had been unaware how incompetent the administration would be in carrying out the task.

"Iraq is such a big problem, I expect I will be drawn into it in one way or another," Cohen said Friday.

Zelikow, a longtime Rice confidant, left the counselor job late last year. The post is a bureaucratic oddity, an undefined adviser role that has sometimes gone to political insiders and sometimes to academics and intellectual provocateurs.

Cohen will continue to teach his classes this spring before beginning full-time work at the State Department.