The United States ambassador to Nicaragua, Kevin Sullivan, will return to Washington on May 19, as reported by the North American diplomatic mission in Managua this Tuesday, May 2, 2023. The head of the delegation completed four and a half years in charge of bilateral relations with the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
Given the decision of the Nicaraguan regime to withdraw the diplomatic placet from the ambassador designated for Managua, the Joe Biden administration decided to send a long-term business manager to the Central American country and he will be the new head of the diplomatic mission.
The US Embassy states that “due to the importance and complexity of our diplomatic mission in Nicaragua, the Secretary has appointed career diplomat Kevin O’Reilly as our long-term Chargé d’Affaires.”
Related news: Murillo rejects Hugo Rodríguez as US ambassador: “He will not be admitted”
The North American official will join the United States Embassy in Managua next June “where he will work closely with Minister Counselor Carla Fleharty to direct our bilateral relationship with Nicaragua and continue our collaboration with the people of Nicaragua.”
“Mr. O’Reilly is a senior member of the Foreign Service and a seasoned expert on the relationship between the United States and Latin America,” he says.
In the press release from the diplomatic mission, he explains that “the United States maintains its commitment to support the legitimate aspirations of the Nicaraguan people to return to a genuine democratic order and full respect for human rights.”
Who is the US envoy?
Kevin O’Reilly became the National Coordinator for the Summit of the Americas after serving as Assistant Secretary of State for Brazil and Southern Cone and Andean Affairs.
He previously served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the United States embassy in Panama City from July 2014 to July 2017, and as embassy chargé d’affaires from June 2015 to February 2016.
He is a career member of the United States Senior Foreign Service. O’Reilly has held other senior-level positions, including Director of the Office of Mexican Affairs and Senior Director of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.
As Director of Mexican Affairs, he helped develop and implement the United States-Mexico High Level Economic Dialogue, an initiative to promote economic growth and job creation, as well as the United States-Mexico Bilateral Forum on Higher Education, Innovation and Research to expand education and economic opportunities for the citizens of both countries.
He served in Baghdad from 2011 to 2012, during the period that US military forces left Iraq, participating in an effort to help Iraq train its police personnel.
O’Reilly served as the White House National Security Council Director for North American Affairs from 2009 to 2011. While there, he helped develop the association US-Canada Beyond the Borderr, an effort to improve public safety and economic competitiveness.
From 2007 to 2008, he served as Director of Latin American Affairs in the Office of International Affairs of the Department of Homeland Security. He also served as Pearson Fellow in the Office of Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois; and in the Pentagon as Action Officer in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Western Europe (NATO) Strategic Plans and Policy Division (J-5) of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
During his career as a Foreign Service Officer, O’Reilly has served abroad at the United States Embassies in Mexico City, Mexico; Santo Domingo Dominican Republic; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Jakarta, Indonesia.
He was born in Evanston, Illinois and has a Master of Arts from US Naval War College and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She received her BA in History and a Juris Doctorate from Loyola University Chicago.
The withdrawal of the diplomatic placet
The Ortega-Murillo regime has repeatedly said that they will not accept Rodríguez as ambassador of the imperialists because he has an “interventionist” discourse, while at the same time calling him “interveneous and disrespectful” for affirming before the United States Congress that he would pressure to the Nicaraguan regime to restore democracy in the country.
Vice President Rosario Murillo promised, on September 30, 2022, that “Mr. Hugo Rodríguez will not be admitted to Nicaragua under any circumstances, much less as an exponent of the worst forms of an offensive and irreverent modality of relations between states that have contravened from its very beginnings the Vienna convention.
The State Department decided at that time that Ambassador Sullivan should “continue to lead our mission while we assess the situation” because “the arrival of an ambassador requires that the host government accept his credentials in order to perform official functions in the country of destination”.
In his speech before the United States Congress, Hugo Rodríguez promised to continue demanding freedom for the political prisoners of the dictatorship, as well as respect for democracy and an end to human rights violations. On September 29, 2022, Washington confirmed his appointment as the new ambassador to the Ortega Murillo regime.
