Obama 'recess appoints' Ricciardone as envoy to Ankar

U.S. President Barack Obama late Wednesday bypassed the Senate and installed Frank Ricciardone as the new ambassador to Ankara, using a rarely exercised mechanism called a “recess appointment” to end five months without representation in Turkey.

The Ankara post has been vacant since July when the previous envoy, James Jeffrey, left to take up his new job as ambassador to Baghdad.

Since then Ricciardone has been unable to win confirmation from the U.S. Senate. All senior administration officials, including ambassadors, need the approval of the Senate, the upper house of Congress, to assume their posts.

With Obama’s 11th-hour recess-appointment move, one of four naming new ambassadors, Ricciardone is now expected to take up his new post in the Turkish capital in early January.

“This is very good news for our relationship with the United States,” said one senior Turkish Foreign Ministry official.

To remain in effect, a recess appointment must be approved by the Senate by the end of the next session of Congress – at the end of 2011 – or the position becomes vacant again. In current practice, this means that a recess appointment must be approved by roughly the end of the next calendar year.

If Obama’s recess appointment had come in the first days of January 2011, before Congress begins its next session, Ricciardone would have served until the end of 2012.

Despite the recess appointment, Obama is expected to continue to seek formal Senate conformation in 2011 for the appointments of Ricciardone and other controversial ambassadors.

Overcoming vetoes

Obama initially nominated Ricciardone, a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and the Philippines, for the post in Ankara on July 1. The diplomat won the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s backing July 22.

But on the last day before the Senate went to a summer recess in August, influential Republican Sen. Sam Brownback formally put a hold on Ricciardone’s nomination, saying: “I am not convinced Ambassador Ricciardone is the right ambassador for Turkey at this time – despite his extensive diplomatic experience.” Brownback’s move effectively prevented a Senate floor vote on Ricciardone.

The archaic and rarely used technique known as the recess appointment is a vestige of the 19th century that allows presidents to take certain actions unilaterally, on the presumption that calling the legislature into session could takes weeks, as it did in the era of horse-drawn carriages. The rule gives U.S. presidents the right to install nominees when the Senate is out of Washington. The new U.S. Senate will take office Jan. 3.

Also late Wednesday, Obama announced recess appointments for Matt Bryza to be U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, Robert Ford to be U.S. ambassador to Syria and Norm Eisen to be U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic.

Bryza’s confirmation had been “vetoed” by pro-Armenian Democratic senators Barbara Boxer and Robert Menendez; Obama’s recess-appointment decision was protested by the largest and most influential U.S. Armenian group. A career diplomat, Bryza was opposed by some in the Armenian-American community because of comments he made in his previous position as deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs while trying to negotiate an end to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

“Armenian-Americans are deeply troubled by President Obama’s decision today to circumvent the U.S. Senate and use a recess appointment to send a deeply flawed diplomat to represent America in Azerbaijan,” said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America.

“The president’s push to send Matt Bryza to Baku without Senate approval represents a disservice to American diplomacy that will, sadly, undermine our nation’s ability to advance our interests and values in the Caucasus region,” Hamparian said.

Ford will become the first U.S. ambassador in Damascus since 2005, when Washington recalled its former envoy.

The Obama administration had argued that returning an ambassador to Syria after a five-year absence would help persuade Damascus to change its policies regarding Israel, Lebanon and Iraq, as well as its willingness to support extremist groups.

Former President George W. Bush’s administration withdrew a full-time ambassador from Syria in 2005 following terrorism accusations and in protest of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, killed in a Beirut truck bombing that his supporters blamed on Syria. Syria denied involvement.

The White House said in its recess-appointments statement that these “are posts that have been left vacant for an extended period of time.”

Ricciardone most recently served as deputy ambassador and charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. He began his career in Ankara and Adana in Turkey, where he served twice again, as political advisor to the U.S. and Turkish commanders of Operation Provide Comfort at İncirlik air base, and as deputy chief of mission and charge d’affaires. He led the transition to an organization of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in 2004, and the Department of State’s Task Force in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on the United States. He served as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s special representative for the Transition of Iraq from 1999-2001.