Gates likely to keep defence job

Washington: President-elect Barack Obama moved closer to assembling his national security team on Tuesday, with sources saying Robert Gates would likely keep his job as defence secretary and retired Marine General James Jones be named national security adviser.

The Politico news website said Gates had agreed to remain as defence secretary in a new Democratic administration and reported that Jones would be named as the top security adviser to Obama.

Quoting officials in both the Democratic and Republican parties, Politico said the announcements would be made early next week when Obama unveils a national security team, including New York Senator Hillary Clinton as his nominee for secretary of state.

Officials at Obama's transition office declined to comment on the report.

Other news outlets, including ABC and Fox, also reported that Gates would stay on at the Pentagon.

But impeccable sources said they did not believe that either Gates or Jones had reached final agreements with Obama, and that there were outstanding issues unresolved for Gates in particular.

Staff issues

A senior Democratic source told Reuters that Gates was still discussing which of his staff he could keep in place under the Obama administration.

"There's an 85 per cent chance he's going to stay," said a second source.

That source said Gates would likely remain in the job for a year or more but was concerned about being viewed as a "lame duck" defence chief if a formal timetable were imposed.

"There are also issues about who he can keep on his staff and who his deputy's going to be. There are a lot of Democrats who want to assume senior positions at the Pentagon and don't want to be left out in the cold," the source said.

A former CIA director, Gates was president of the Texas A&M University when President George W. Bush asked him to take over the US Department of Defence from the combative Donald Rumsfeld in 2006.

Gates, 65, is seen by analysts as one of the last credible voices in the Bush administration. He set about putting things back on an even keel with a low-key approach that sought to build constructive relationships. However, a source close to Jones denied there was an agreement between Obama and the former Marine commandant who also led US and Nato forces in Europe.

"There definitely have been discussions but there hasn't been any official decision," the source said.

Jones was a strong critic of the handling of the Iraq war. In Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward's 2006 book State of Denial Jones is quoted as describing the Iraq war as a "debacle".

The Politico website said its Democrats sources also expected James Steinberg, a former deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, to be named deputy secretary of state while Susan Rice, one of Obama's foreign policy advisers, is expected to be named US ambassador to the United Nations.