Robert H. Reid to lead AP news coverage of the Middle East

Reid named AP Middle East regional editor

NEW YORK — Robert H. Reid, a veteran correspondent who has led coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and covered major stories from the fall of the Shah of Iran to the Balkan conflicts, will return to Cairo as the new Middle East regional editor for The Associated Press.

Senior Managing Editor John Daniszewski announced the appointment on Monday.

Reid goes to Cairo from Kabul, where he has served since May 2009 as chief of bureau and news director for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“For the past decade, Bob Reid has been reporting and analyzing from the field in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In Cairo, he will assume a larger role leading AP reporters and editors across one of the most fascinating and important parts of the world — a region that is critical to the challenges facing this century,” said Daniszewski.

Reid, 63, oversaw AP’s coverage of the initial U.S. overthrow of the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and related events including the kidnapping and murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl and the capture of top al-Qaida figures in Pakistan.

In December 1979, he was among the first American reporters to reach Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion, arriving in Kabul as Soviet tanks rolled through the streets, to provide some of the earliest firsthand accounts.

Before moving to Kabul in 2009, Reid was chief of bureau in Iraq. He also held the title of correspondent at large based in Amman, Jordan, from 2005 to 2008.

Reid joined the AP in 1969 in Charlotte, N.C., and took military leave in 1970. After serving as an officer in the U.S. Army in Germany, he returned to the AP in Charlotte in 1973. He transferred to the international desk three years later, and received his first overseas posting in Bonn, West Germany, in 1977, where he managed coverage of the Polish labor strikes of 1980 and imposition of martial law that helped bring down the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe.

Since then, Reid’s major postings have included central European news editor in Bonn from 1980-1982, chief of bureau in Cairo from 1982-1985; roving Middle East correspondent from 1985-1986; chief of bureau in Manila, Philippines, from 1986-1995; chief correspondent at the United Nations from 1995-1998; chief of bureau in Vienna from 1998-2001; and European news editor based in Brussels in 2001.

In his nearly four decades with the AP, Reid has covered such other major events as the Iranian revolution, the birth of Solidarity in Poland, the civil war in Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq war and the war in the Balkans.

Reid won the AP Gramling award for journalism excellence in 2005.

A native of Asheville, N.C., Reid graduated from Davidson College in 1969.