President Reagan today nominated Richard Murphy, the U.S. Ambassador in Saudi Arabia for the last two years, to be Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, replacing Nicholas Veliotes. Veliotes will become Ambassador to Egypt.
The nominations were announced personally at the State Department by Secretary of State George Shultz who included them in a list of several other personnel changes. Both Veliotes, who will replace Alfred Atherton, and Murphy, must be confirmed by the Senate.
In his remarks about the personnel changes, Shultz singled out Veliotes who, he said, “has been doing one of the toughest jobs in town for quite some time” and who was “anxious to do something else.” Veliotes has held his present post since the beginning of the Reagan Administration.
SERIES OF CHANGES IN LAST TWO WEEKS
The changes today mean that the Reagan Administration has changed during the last two weeks three of the officials who have been chiefly responsible for the negotiations on Lebanon and the President’s overall Mideast plan. Just 13 days ago, Reagan replaced Philip Habib, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, with Robert McFarlane, Deputy National Security Advisor.
Also relieved from duties as a Mideast negotiator was Habib’s chief assistant, Morris Draper, who had been a deputy to Veliotes before concentrating on the negotiations in Lebanon.
Shultz denied today that the new appointments reflected a decision by the Administration to change its Mideast policies. “Our policies are very clear and they are the right policies, ” he maintained.
Nor would he agree with the suggestion that the Administration was “disappointed” with Veliotes. He said it was the “universal view that he has done a simply outstanding job. ” He added that Murphy and the others now dealing with the Mideast have all been involved with the issue for some time.
“We would all have liked to move further than we have been able to move,” Shultz said. But he stressed “people have to keep reminding themselves that these problems are not easy, they have been around awhile.”
Veliotes’ replacement by Murphy became known late last night. There have been reports since January that the Administration wanted to replace Veliotes. He had been blamed by some for the failure of King Hussein of Jordan to join the peace talks since it was his talks with Hussein last year that led Reagan to announce his September 1 peace initiative.
MURPHY HAD SERVED IN SYRIA
The 54-year-old Murphy, a career foreign service officer, like Veliotes, was Ambassador to Syria from 1974 to 1978, having been named to that post when Syria and the U.S. resumed diplomatic relations that had been broken by Damascus after the 1967 Six-Day War. He had previously served in Syria as an economics officer in Aleppo from 1960 to 1963.
Murphy’s knowledge of Syria may be especially important to his new post since the major effort of the U.S. now is to get the Syrians to agree to remove their troops from Lebanon. Murphy, who speaks Arabic and French, accompanied Shultz on his trip to Damascus last month.
Shultz said today that he does not believe that Murphy ever visited Israel in an official capacity, although he will now be going to Israel and other Mideast countries. The 54-year-old Veliotes who was Ambassador to Jordan when he was named Assistant Secretary, was also a Deputy Assistant Secretary and had been Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Israel from 1973 to 1975.
Shultz stressed that Murphy was his recommendation for the job and denied that there had been other candidates proposed by the White House. Several other persons had been reported earlier as possibilities for the job, including Samuel Lewis, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel. There was even one report yesterday that the White House had wanted to name Richard Stone, the President’s special envoy for Central America, who is Jewish, but that Shultz had objected strongly.
SERVED IN OTHER AMBASSADORIAL POSTS
This will be Murphy’s forth Ambassadorial post. He was Ambassador to Mauritania from 1971 to 1974 and Ambassador to the Philippines from 1978 to 1981. He was suddenly sent to Saudi Arabia in August, 1981 when the then Secretary of State Alexander Haig fired Robert Neumann, who had only been envoy for a few months, because of Neumann’s criticism of Haig’s efforts in the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia.
Murphy also served in the State Department as Country Director for Arabian Peninsula Affairs, 1970 to 1971, and as assistant executive director for personnel in the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, 1968 to 1970.
Shultz said that no assignment has been made yet for Atherton, who was Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs when President Carter named him Ambassador to Egypt.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
