Haley became a popular UN diplomat despite Trump policies

Nikki Haley came to her job as the top U.S. diplomat at the United Nations with no foreign policy experience, but in less than two years she made many friends — even among ambassadors from countries at odds with the Trump administration's policies.

Tuesday's sudden announcement that she was leaving by the end of the year ricocheted through U.N. headquarters like a lightning bolt, with many expressing shock, and some sadness and dismay.

"It was a surprise, not a very pleasant one for me personally," said Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, whose country has clashed with U.S. positions including on Syria, Iran and Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The ambassadors on the powerful U.N. Security Council who worked closely with Haley praised her — a testament to her skills and success as a diplomat — though many of their countries, including America's traditional allies, have serious issues with her government's foreign policy.

When Haley arrived at the U.N. on Jan. 27, 2017, she was the former governor of South Carolina and a novice at international affairs but she wasted no time in announcing a new way the U.S. was going to do business.

The Trump administration's goal was to show U.S. strength, speak out, and defend its allies — and as for countries opposing America, "we're taking names" and will respond accordingly, she said.

Haley has kept to that goal, but she has also honed her diplomatic skills, which were recognized by half a dozen members on the 15-nation Security Council as they headed into a closed meeting Tuesday afternoon on chemical weapons in Syria.

Nebenzia said he and Haley have "good working and personal relations despite all the differences that we were and are having."

"She's a charismatic personality," he said. "She was a friend to all of us, and ... beyond the doors of the Security Council we as a group were very friendly."

Bolivia's U.N. Ambassador Sasha Llorentty Soliz said the Security Council "is like a family — sometimes a dysfunctional family — but nevertheless we care about each other and I really like Nikki very much."

The good personal relations, however, could never mask the sharp differences over a host of issues ranging from U.S. policy toward Syria to Trump's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate agreement and the U.N. Human Rights Council. Washington's decisions to halt to funding for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees and to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem also upset some council members.

Llorentty Soliz stressed the separation, echoing Bolivian President Evo Morales, who launched a blistering critique of U.S. policy toward Iran, the Mideast and Trump's immigration policies at a Security Council meeting the American president presided over on Sept. 26 during the annual U.N. gathering of world leaders.

Sweden's U.N. Ambassador Olof Skoog said "there are issues that relate to the U.N. where we don't always see eye to eye, but with Nikki there has always been a very close relationship, respectful and very frank."

While Haley's speeches in the council can sometimes "be very strong," he said, council members were often invited to her apartment afterward.

France's U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre, who met Haley when she was governor of South Carolina and he was ambassador to Washington, said "even though we didn't agree on everything, we had established a particularly close and constructive working relationship based on trust."

"Nikki Haley is one of the most talented, most authentic U.S. government officials that I have ever met," he said.

At a White House event, seated near Trump in the Oval Office, Haley told reporters that her six years as governor followed by nearly two years at the U.N. has been an "intense time, and I'm a believer in term limits."

"I have given everything I've got these last eight years," she said. "I think you have to be selfless enough to know when to step aside and allow someone else to do the job."

Trump told her: "Hopefully, you'll be coming back at some point."

The daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley, who is 46 and not personally wealthy, hinted in her resignation letter to Trump that she is headed to the private sector. She said that as a businessman Trump would appreciate "my sense that returning from government to the private sector is not a step down but a step up."

As for a replacement, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One he was considering five candidates and a successor would be named in two to three weeks — or maybe sooner. Among those under consideration, Trump said, is former deputy national security adviser Dina Powell.

Trump told reporters he heard his daughter Ivanka Trump's name discussed for the post, but said if he selected her he'd be accused of nepotism, and she later ruled herself out in a tweet.

U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell's name has also been floated for the post, but Trump suggested he'd rather keep him in his current post "because he's doing such a good job."

Privately, many diplomats believe Haley will run for president, though she ruled out 2020 on Tuesday without being asked, and pointed to Trump saying she will campaign for him.

"She's young, she's energetic, she's ambitious," Russia's Nebenzia said. "I think we will see her after she has this well-deserved respite that she was referring to" in her remarks at the White House.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations called Tuesday for “a clear, transparent and credible investigation” of mass graves uncovered at two major hospitals in war-torn Gaza that were raided by Israeli troops.

Credible investigators must have access to the sites, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters, and added that more journalists need to be able to work safely in Gaza to report on the facts.

Earlier Tuesday, U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said he was “horrified” by the destruction of the Shifa medical center in Gaza City and Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis as well as the reported discovery of mass graves in and around the facilities after the Israelis left.

He called for independent and transparent investigations into the deaths, saying that “given the prevailing climate of impunity, this should include international investigators.”

“Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law,” Türk said. “And the intentional killing of civilians, detainees and others who are ‘hors de combat’ (incapable of engaging in combat) is a war crime.”

U.S. State Department spokesman Vedant Patel on Tuesday called the reports of mass graves at the hospitals “incredibly troubling” and said U.S. officials have asked the Israeli government for information.

The Israeli military said its forces exhumed bodies that Palestinians had buried earlier as part of its search for the remains of hostages captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war. The military said bodies were examined in a respectful manner and those not belonging to Israeli hostages were returned to their place.

The Israeli military says it killed or detained hundreds of militants who had taken shelter inside the two hospital complexes, claims that could not be independently verified.

The Palestinian civil defense in the Gaza Strip said Monday that it had uncovered 283 bodies from a temporary burial ground inside the main hospital in Khan Younis that was built when Israeli forces were besieging the facility last month. At the time, people were not able to bury the dead in a cemetery and dug graves in the hospital yard, the group said.

The civil defense said some of the bodies were of people killed during the hospital siege. Others were killed when Israeli forces raided the hospital.

Palestinian health officials say the hospital raids have destroyed Gaza’s health sector as it tries to cope with the mounting toll from over six months of war.

The issue of who could or should conduct an investigation remains in question.

For the United Nations to conduct an investigation, one of its major bodies would have to authorize it, Dujarric said.

“I think it’s not for anyone to prejudge the results or who would do it,” he said. “I think it needs to be an investigation where there is access and there is credibility.”

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, said after visiting Israel and the West Bank in December that a probe by the court into possible crimes by Hamas militants and Israeli forces “is a priority for my office.”

The discovery of the graves "is another reason why we need a cease-fire, why we need to see an end to this conflict, why we need to see greater access for humanitarians, for humanitarian goods, greater protection for hospitals” and for the release of Israeli hostages, Dujarric said Monday.

In the Hamas attack that launched the war, militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Israel says the militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.

In response, Israel’s air and ground offensive in Gaza, aimed at eliminating Hamas, has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, around two-thirds of them children and women. It has devastated Gaza’s two largest cities, created a humanitarian crisis and led around 80% of the territory’s population to flee to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave.

FILE - U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, speaks during a news conference in Baghdad, Iraq, Aug. 9, 2023. The United Nations is calling for "a clear, transparent and credible investigation" of mass graves uncovered at two major hospitals in war-torn Gaza that were raided by Israeli troops. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, File)