Biden picks LA Mayor Eric Garcetti as ambassador to India, AP reports
President Joe Biden is expected to announce that he is nominating Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to be his ambassador to India, according to the Associated Press, who cited a person familiar with the matter.
Additionally, Biden is expected to nominate former senior State Department official Nicholas Burns to serve as his ambassador to China.
With the selections, Biden is turning to a seasoned diplomat and a longtime political ally to serve in two of the country’s highest-profile diplomatic postings. It was not clear when either nomination would be announced, according to the person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to publicly comment on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. The White House declined to comment on either Burns or Garcetti and noted that "no one is final until they’re announced."
Burns and Garcetti, if confirmed by the Senate, would come to their postings at high-pressure moments in the U.S. relationships with China and India.
Biden on Wednesday asked U.S. intelligence officials to "redouble" their efforts to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese lab. The president has also pressed China’s Xi Jinping on his government crackdown of democracy activists in Hong Kong, human rights abuses against Uighur and ethnic minorities in the western Xinjiang province, and what the U.S. sees as unfair and coercive trade practices.
Burns previously served as undersecretary of state under President George W. Bush and as U.S. envoy to Greece and NATO. Burns is now the executive director of the Aspen Strategy Group and Aspen Security Forum. He’s also a professor of the practice of diplomacy and international relations at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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