Elizabeth Jones appointed Chargé d’Affaires ad interim at US Embassy in New Delhi, 6th in 21 months

Elizabeth Jones, 74, is the sixth interim US envoy in the last 21 months (since January 2021) asked to step in for the job, which is considered a placeholder until a full-time Ambassador is confirmed by the US Congress.

During the Obama administration, Jones had served as Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. In October 2021, she was appointed Coordinator for Afghan relocation efforts.

As Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia for the Department of State from 2001 to 2005, Jones designed US policies for NATO and European Union countries, Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia. She supervised 54 US ambassadors and their embassies in the early years of the Russian presidency under Vladimir Putin.

Previously, she served as Senior Advisor for Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy after having been Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (1998-2000). Jones was Ambassador to the Republic of Kazakhstan (1995-98) and Executive Assistant to Secretary of State Warren Christopher (1993-94).

She had also served as Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) at the US embassies in Bonn and Islamabad.

In a speech as Assistant Secretary in 2005, Jones had said “NATO is an organisation of like-minded countries, like-minded states, this has been made clear through enlargement,” and the tasks before the countries that have recently joined NATO are “nation-building”, “how to treat minorities”, democracy and economic reform.

In a 2002 interview at the Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, she spoke on US-Russia relations after 9/11, and said NATO’s original goal is to “make the Russians comfortable with NATO and with an expanded NATO”. She said that “NATO is no longer the enemy of Russia and Russia is no longer an enemy of NATO”.

Incidentally, she had served in the US embassy in Islamabad when Pakistan President Zia-ul-Haq and then US Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Raphel died in a plane crash in August 1988. “As it turned out, what I believe it to be was a freak mechanical failure in the airplane and an accident,” she had said in the 2002 interview.

On Tuesday, an official statement from a spokesperson of the US State Department said, “Ambassador Elizabeth Jones will be departing for New Delhi to serve as Chargé d’Affaires, ad interim… In India, Ambassador Jones will join our Embassy and Consulate interagency teams in advancing and expanding the partnership between our governments and people, a partnership that Secretary Blinken has called one of the most consequential in the world.”

Currently, Patricia A Lacina is the Chargé d’Affaires at the US Embassy in New Delhi. She assumed charge on September 9, 2021.

After US envoy Kenneth Juster, a political appointee of the Donald Trump administration, departed following the inauguration of the Biden administration on January 20, 2021, there have been a battery of interim envoys at the embassy in New Delhi — Donald Heflin, Edgard Kagan, Daniel Bennett Smith, Atul Keshap and Patricia Lacina.

In July 2021, the Biden administration announced the nomination of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti as the next US Ambassador to India.

But Garcetti’s nomination is yet to receive confirmation from the US Senate. His nomination was initially blocked by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley because of allegations of inappropriate behaviour by one of his senior staffers. Though the hold on his nomination has been lifted, Democrats are unwilling to put his nomination to vote on the Senate floor as they believe that they do not have enough votes. Mid-term polls in the US Congress are expected to bring clarity on how the administration will approach the next steps on the appointment of the next US envoy.