State Department Will Name Taylor to Lead Aid Efforts in Libya and Egypt

The State Department will formally create a new position later this week to oversee American aid efforts in Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia even as the Obama administration debates whether the U.S. should play a leading role in helping to rebuild the three countries.

Sources familiar with matter say William Taylor, a well-regarded former American ambassador to the Ukraine, will be filling the role. He previously managed reconstruction efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe. The formal announcement will come as early as Thursday, these sources said.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland declined to comment on Taylor's pending appointment or the exact contours of his new position. "I think we'll have more to say about this later this week," she wrote in an e-mail.

The move comes amid growing indications that the Obama administration is planning to devote only minimal American financial resources to aid and capacity-building efforts in the three countries, in part because of a fierce political backlash in Egypt over an earlier aid push.

In the aftermath of the popular protests that toppled longtime Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the U.S. forgave roughly $1 billion of Egyptian debt and announced plans to devote $65 million to projects aimed at building new political parties and nongovernmental organizations as well as $100 million to help stimulate the moribund Egyptian economy. The aid would have been in addition to the $1.3 billion Egypt gets every year in military aid.

But Egypt's military rulers reacted furiously to new aid, arguing that money should be funneled to Cairo rather than directly to the political parties. A senior member of the military government publicly accused Washington of violating Egypt's sovereignty. Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, fired back, saying Washington was concerned about the "anti-Americanism that's creeping into the Egyptian public discourse." Last month, the USAID country director for Egypt, Jim Bever, was abruptly brought back to the U.S. To date, only about $40 million of the planned American aid has been spent.