It remains unclear when incumbent Pentagon chief Leon Panetta will leave his post, though he had indicated earlier that he would not stay through Obama's second term.
Kerry, chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee and a veteran Navy soldier who had fought in Vietnam, knows budget affairs well and has rich experience in the diplomacy that has increasingly become a part of the defense portfolio.
Other candidates for Pentagon chief include Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Michele Flournoy, former undersecretary for policy at the Pentagon.
Even if Rice is nominated to be secretary of state, her nomination is expected to be hitting major obstacles in the Senate, due to her role in dealing with the Sept. 11 terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
Days after the attack, Rice insisted that it was a spontaneous result of protests launched by angry Muslims to condemn a U.S.- made anti-Islamic movie. Some Republican lawmakers criticized this as an election-related attempt to portray the terror attack as a peaceful demonstration that turned violent, rather than admitting it as a terror attack.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Sunday that Rice "would have an in-cred-ibly difficult time" winning Senate confirmation as secretary of state.
If Rice is appointed secretary of state, then Antony Blinken, Vice President Joe Biden's national security adviser, and Samantha Power, the National Security Council's senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights, are two leading candidates to fill her UN post, the Post reported.
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