Senate Panel Delays Vote on Bolton Nomination Until Next Week
April 13 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee put off until next week a vote on John Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations to give the panel more time to review new information.
``Senator Lugar and Senator Biden agreed to give the members sufficient time to review all of the documents, transcripts and other materials, some of which came in late,'' said Norm Kurz, a spokesman for Senator Joseph Biden, the panel's ranking Democrat. The vote could be held as early as Tuesday, said Kurz. Richard Lugar of Indiana is chairman of the foreign relations panel.
Senate Democrats are trying to show Bolton's conduct compromised the integrity of U.S. intelligence gathering. They also say that Bolton is too ill-tempered and too contemptuous of the UN to be an effective U.S. envoy.
Bolton, 56, appears likely to win Senate confirmation even after a former State Department official testified yesterday that Bolton abused subordinates and put the integrity of U.S. intelligence at risk.
No Republicans have said they oppose Bolton after two days of hearings on his nomination and they outnumber Democrats on the panel 10-8. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, the lone committee Republican whose vote has been in question, has repeatedly said he is inclined to vote for Bolton.
Chafee spokesman Stephen Hourahan didn't immediately return a telephone call today seeking comment. Andy Fisher, a spokesman for Lugar, didn't immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment.
Ford's Testimony
Carl Ford, former head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told the foreign relations panel yesterday that Bolton sought to have a State Department analyst and a CIA analyst fired in 2002 for refusing to approve a Bolton speech mentioning potential biological weapons in Cuba. Bolton was forced to change the speech.
President George W. Bush nominated Bolton, State Department undersecretary for arms control and international security, to replace John Danforth, a former Republican U.S. senator from Missouri who left the UN post in January to return to his home state after seven months on the job.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last month that Bolton ``knows how to get things done.''
``He is a tough-minded diplomat,'' Rice said in Washington. ``He has a strong record of success, and he has a proven track record of effective multilateralism.''
Rice credited Bolton with helping to build a coalition of nations to fight trafficking in chemical, biological and nuclear materials and with getting Libya to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program and opening the way for normalized relations and trade.
Senator Chris Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, asked Lugar in a letter today to continue hearings on Bolton's nomination by scheduling three further witnesses, including Stuart Cohen of the interagency National Intelligence Council and two State Department intelligence officials. |
