Veteran diplomat Antony Blinken, who served as No. 2 at the US State Department and as deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration, is President-elect Joe Biden's most likely pick to be secretary of state, a Biden ally says.
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Bloomberg cited sources as saying an announcement on Blinken's appointment was expected on Tuesday. Biden's transition team declined comment.
A Biden ally, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters Blinken was Biden's most likely choice and an announcement was expected as soon as this week.
Blinken is a longtime confidant of Biden and one of his closest advisers on the campaign trail.
In an interview with Reuters in October, Blinken said the United States must not cede its leadership role in the world.
"As much of a burden as it sometimes seems to play ... the alternative in terms of our interests and the lives of Americans are much worse," he said.
People familiar with his management style describe Blinken, 58, as a "diplomat's diplomat", deliberative and relatively soft-spoken but well versed in foreign policy.
The New York City-born, Harvard-educated Blinken practised law briefly and entered politics in the late 1980s helping Michael Dukakis' presidential campaign raise money.
He joined Democratic president Bill Clinton's White House as a speechwriter and became one of his national security aides.
Under Obama, Blinken worked to limit most US combat deployments to small numbers of troops. But he told Reuters last year that President Donald Trump had "gutted American credibility" with his pullback of US troops in Syria in 2019 that left Kurdish US allies in the lurch in their fight against Islamic State.
Australian Associated Press
