WASHINGTON - The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, has emerged as the top Obama choice for his next National Security Adviser, according to a media report.Rice is described as the top front-runner to succeed Thomas Donilon as President Barack Obama’s national security adviser later this year, The Washington Post reported Sunday citing an official “familiar with the president’s thinking.”“The job would place her at the nexus of foreign-policy decision making and allow her to rival the influence of Secretary of State John Kerry in shaping the president’s foreign policy,” the Post said.The appointment, according to the report, would mark “a dramatic twist of fortune for Rice,” whose nomination to become secretary of state was strongly opposed by Republican lawmakers, blaming her for offering contradictory statements about a September attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that led to the death of four Americans, including its ambassador to the African nation. Subsequently, she pulled out of the race for secretary of state.The fierce criticism against Rice by Senate Republicans, who questioned her honesty, was further exasperated by some liberal Democrats who “questioned whether her temperament, her family’s investments and her relations with African strongmen made her unfit to lead the State Department,” the report says.The standing of the 48-year-old Rice, “remains secure” within the Obama administration, the report adds, citing White House officials and Democratic lawmakers.Her UN colleagues, meanwhile, “are betting” she will ultimately serve as Obama’s national security adviser, probably sometime after the United States assumes the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council in July, the daily added.“I think that Susan always maintains close relations with the president and his national security team, and that continues to be the case,” Ben Rhodes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, was quoted as saying. “If anything, the way she handled the Benghazi situation - and then the withdrawal - only enhanced her relations here, because she did so with grace and good humour.”