New Delhi
15 February 2011
Nicholas Burns, who successfully shepherded the India-US nuclear deal, may
have lost out to Marc Isaiah Grossman for the post of the US special representative for
Afghanistan and Pakistan, but Grossman is no stranger to India either.
The 59-year-old former diplomat, who was Burns' predecessor as the under secretary of
state for political affairs, is widely tipped to replace Richard Holbrooke, who died in
December 2010.
Grossman should be familiar to former foreign secretaries Shyam Saran and Kanwal
Sibal, and others, as one of the principal architects of the Next Steps in Strategic
Partnership or NSSP, which was the precursor of the nuclear deal.
In 2003, Grossman was reportedly in the running for replacing Robert Blackwill as the
US ambassador to India.
As New Delhi awaits a formal announcement, it will be hoping that Washington's new Af-
Pak point-man would not make himself unwelcome here as Holbrooke did.
Holbrooke's visits to New Delhi had become infrequent after the Indian Government
sensed an attempt to re-hyphenate India and Pakistan. Also, he did not particularly
endear himself to the government here for his remarks that Indians were not the real
targets of the February 26, 2010 attacks in Kabul.
Grossman's appointment will come ahead of the phased reduction of American troops
from Afghanistan starting July and the ongoing attempts to facilitate reintegration and
reconciliation of Taliban elements, which has not been well received in New Delhi.
Currently, Grossman is a vice-chairman of the Cohen Group, a Washington-based
consultancy firm headed by William Cohen, a former US defence secretary. Among other
services, the firm is helping top US aerospace and defence majors to enter the Indian
market.
Grossman is a former US ambassador to Turkey. In the last 1970s he served at the US
embassy in Pakistan.
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