US Secretary of State Colin Powell does not intend to stay on if President George Bush wins a second term next year but has not yet signalled his intention to step down, informed sources and officials said on Monday.
The State Department flatly denied a Washington Post report that Powell had already informed the White House of his plans but remained silent on what the secretary’s intentions might be if Bush is re-elected in 2004.
”There is no basis for the story,” deputy spokesperson Philip Reeker said.
Notably incorrect is the assertion that Powell’s deputy, Richard Armitage, had recently told national security advisor Condoleezza Rice that he and Powell would both be leaving even if Bush won next November, Reeker said.
”There was no conversation between the deputy secretary and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice concerning any plans for ‘stepping down’,” he said in a statement.
”As Secretary Powell has always said, he and Deputy Secretary Armitage serve at the pleasure of the president, and will continue to do so,” Reeker said.
However, sources close to Powell said it was indeed the case that he planned on following the example of his recent predecessors and serve for only one term.
”I don’t think it’s any secret the secretary intends to leave,” one source said on condition of anonymity. ”He made that quite clear when he took the job in the first place.”
Powell is known to have promised his wife, Alma, that he would serve only four years as secretary of state unless absolutely extraordinary circumstances forced him to stay on.
”This is a difficult job that can really grind a person down,” a second source said. ”Two-term secretaries are rare and he [Powell] has made it known he isn’t that rare.”
In fact, since the dawn of the jet age, which added gruelling international air travel to the requirements of the job, only one secretary of state has served through two full consecutive presidential terms: Dean Rusk.
Rusk was appointed by former president John F Kennedy in 1961 and remained on the job until 1969 — staying on after Kennedy’s assassination to serve as president Lyndon Johnson’s top diplomat.
The next longest serving secretary of state was George Shultz, who took over the job two years into former president Ronald Reagan’s first term in 1982 and stayed until 1989 as part of Reagan’s second administration.
Since Shultz, the only secretary of state to have had the opportunity to serve in two consecutive administrations was Warren Christopher, who stepped down after former president Bill Clinton’s first term. – Sapa-AFP