United States President George Bush on Thursday weighed in publicly for the first time to try to swing Republicans behind his controversial choice of US ambassador to the United Nations.
In a week of unusual division among Republicans, Bush’s efforts appeared aimed as much at his own party as at Democratic senators, who have fought strenuously to try to derail the candidacy of hardliner John Bolton.
”John’s distinguished career in service to our nation demonstrates that he is the right man at the right time for this important assignment,” Bush told a conference of insurers in Washington.
”I urge the Senate to put aside politics and confirm John Bolton to the United Nations.”
The intervention was seen as sign of how important the struggle over Bolton’s appointment is to Bush’s second term agenda. Behind the scenes, the White House has contacted wavering Republicans offering private meetings with Bolton, who is known to have the strong backing of the Vice President, Dick Cheney.
As the state department’s arms control chief, Bolton made little secret of his hostility to the UN. But his appointment had looked secure until Tuesday when a Republican member of the Senate foreign relations committee, George Voinovich, said he needed more time to study new allegations that Bolton had misused government power and was abusive.
That hesitation from Voinovich and other senators delays a committee vote on Bolton’s candidacy until early next month — giving Democrats more time to dig up evidence of misconduct.
In turn, that forces the White House to confront the prospect of its first ever defeat in a Senate confirmation vote.
Although Bush faced unusually strong resistance from Democrats to the appointment of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State and Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, he has been forced to back down only once, withdrawing the nomination of Bernard Kerik as homeland security chief.
Rice, travelling in Lithuania, endorsed Bolton as ”the right person to be the United States ambassador to the United Nations at what is a really quite critical time”.
New revelations surfaced on Thursday from the former US ambassador to South Korea, Thomas Hubbard, who described ”undiplomatic behaviour” by Bolton during a 2003 visit to Seoul.
Hubbard, a Bush administration appointee, told Newsweek magazine that he had contacted Senate investigators to correct Bolton’s testimony about a speech in which he described life in North Korea as a ”hellish nightmare”.
Last week, Bolton told the Senate the ambassador had praised the speech. In fact, Hubbard told Newsweek he had advised Bolton to tone it down.
The Senate foreign relations committee has also asked to interview the former deputy CIA director, John McLaughlin, to confirm whether Bolton had visited agency headquarters to demand the sacking of an intelligence analyst who did not support his hardline views. – Guardian Unlimited Â