Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's delay in replacing former deputy Robert Zoellick, who quit in June, is creating policy gaps on major issues from China to Sudan, U.S. foreign-policy analysts and officials say.

Zoellick, 53, announced in June that he was leaving the department's No. 2 job to become a vice chairman at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York, leaving Rice to grapple with crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, the Korean peninsula and Africa.

``It is surprising that during an incredibly consequential period for American foreign policy and national security, that we're without a deputy at the State Department,'' said Kurt Campbell, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' International Security Program in Washington. ``Condi is extraordinarily able, but it's a big world out there.''

The void is particularly evident in Asia and Africa policy making, where Zoellick played a pivotal diplomatic role.

Zoellick took the lead in prodding China's leaders to be ``responsible stakeholders'' considering global security concerns; since his departure, the U.S.-China relationship has focused more on economic issues. In Sudan, he developed personal relationships with rebel leaders who are key to ending the bloodshed in the war-torn Darfur region; the fragile peace accord he negotiated before he departed is now in danger of unraveling.

Picking Up the Slack

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said last month that other officials have picked up the slack since Zoellick left. ``You can kind of go down the line of issues that he had a great interest in and was deeply involved in and you see people around the building working real hard on those issues,'' McCormack said.

Still, Carlos Pascual, a former diplomat now at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said vacancy has hindered U.S. efforts to persuade China to re-evaluate its energy investments in Iran as a way to pressure Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment may be a result of the vacancy at State. Enrichment is a key step in the creation of a nuclear weapon.

Zoellick, ``through his direct channels with the Chinese,'' had ``the most important impact on that question,'' Pascual said. Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary for Asia cited by McCormack as the department's point man on China, has focused mostly on trying to revive the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program rather than the broader U.S.-China relationship.

Paulson's Role

While the appointment of Henry Paulson as Treasury secretary in July eased concerns that U.S. policy toward China would drift, Pascual said Zoellick's absence is being felt in important if less direct ways.

Paulson has ``given those involved in China policy a sense there is a major, serious player who is engaged on economic policy issues,'' Pascual said. ``What he does not do is link that back, on a daily basis, to foreign policy and security policy. There's still a major gap there.''

Randy Schriver, an Asia specialist and chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in Bush's first term, said that ``there are subtle problems with having Treasury as your lead agency in managing a bilateral relationship. They're not as comprehensive in their purview of issues.''

`A Gaping Void'

In Africa, meanwhile, Zoellick's departure left a ``gaping void in the administration's Sudan policy,'' said Colin Thomas- Jensen, advocacy and research officer for Africa in the Washington office of the International Crisis Group. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and 2.5 million others forced to flee their homes since 2003 in the Darfur region, an area the size of France. The U.S. has described the killings as genocide.

Zoellick announced his resignation just weeks after negotiating the peace accord between the Sudanese government and one rebel group in Darfur. Since his departure, violence has worsened, no other faction has signed on to the accord, and the deal is on the brink of collapse.

By not immediately picking someone of similar stature ``to pursue implementation of the peace agreement, I think we doomed it probably to its early death,'' Thomas-Jensen said.

Jendayi Frazer, the assistant secretary for Africa, waited three days during her August visit to Khartoum for a meeting with President Umar Hassan al-Bashir -- which was taken as a sign of how little regard the Sudanese president had for her.

A New Envoy

On Sept. 19, President George W. Bush appointed Andrew Natsios, the former director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, who has extensive experience in Sudan, as a new presidential envoy on Darfur.

While Natsios plans to travel to Sudan later this month, new restrictions on the movement of U.S. diplomats there may complicate his visit. He may also find that he'll be too late to have much success in persuading the Sudanese government to accept United Nations peacekeepers, or to work on implementation of the faltering peace accord.

John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, said yesterday that Sudan has threatened to attack any peacekeeping troops.

While the State Department hasn't disclosed a timetable for replacing Zoellick, Rice has been picking through a list of candidates and discussing them with the White House.

Meanwhile, many of the deputy's responsibilities have fallen to Undersecretary for Management Henrietta Fore, a long-time friend of Rice's, and Undersecretary for Policy Nicholas Burns.

Status-Conscious

Burns, the department's third-highest ranking official, is best known as the U.S. negotiator with European partners on Iran's nuclear program. While he's regarded as a capable diplomat, he isn't high-ranking enough to wield clout internationally, said Campbell, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia. ``The official role of deputy, particularly with countries that are status-conscious, is critical,'' Campbell said.

While the deputy secretary is traditionally drawn from outside the State Department bureaucracy, Rice could eventually elevate a career diplomat like Burns if she can't find a suitable outside candidate. Another possibility is Randall Tobias, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Either of those selections would require two sets of Senate confirmation hearings -- one to approve the new deputy and one to fill the vacated slot.

``The deputy secretary can fill in for the secretary better than anyone else in the department,'' said Lawrence Eagleburger, who as the deputy to James Baker traveled secretly to Beijing after the Tiananmen Square riots in 1989.

In addition, ``a deputy secretary that's close to the secretary can do so much more in terms of administration, management and helping out on the substance,'' he said. ``The secretary can only do so many things at once.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Janine Zacharia in Washington at jzacharia@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 6, 2006 00:16 EDT