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US lawmakers, colleagues laud stellar Holbrooke

Posted on: Tue December 14, 2010

WASHINGTON: US lawmakers and former colleagues paid tribute Monday to the late veteran US diplomat Richard Holbrooke as a  stellar  force in US foreign policy through his decades of accomplishments around the globe.     

Perhaps best known for brokering the 1995 peace agreement that ended three years of war in Bosnia, Holbrooke also served as the US ambassador to the United Nations, and most recently worked on the Afghan and Pakistan dossiers.     

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, praised Holbrooke as  always a man on a mission, the toughest mission, and that mission was waging peace through tough-as-nails, never-quit diplomacy -- and Richard s life s work saved tens of thousands of lives.      

 We loved his energy, we loved his resolve -- that s who Richard was, and he died giving everything he had to one last difficult mission for the country he loved,  Kerry added in his tribute.  

 It is almost a bittersweet bookend that a career of public diplomacy that began trying to save a war gone wrong, now ends with a valiant effort to keep another war from going wrong.      

He was referring to Holbrooke s early work on Vietnam and latest assignment as US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.     

Kerry added that:  wherever chaos and violence threatened American interests and human lives for nearly a half century, wherever there was a need for courage and insight, Richard Holbrooke showed up for duty.  

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called Holbrooke  a dynamic force in American diplomacy for more than five decades.  His stellar service is deeply appreciated and held in the highest esteem.      

Holbrooke, 69, died after undergoing surgery for a torn aorta at a Washington hospital.     

Jamie Rubin, a former State Department spokesman under president Bill Clinton and colleague of Holbrooke, told a US television Holbrooke  helped keep a moral compass for American foreign policy.  

Courtesy :The News