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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (122336)	1/17/2001 2:37:27 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Biden: 'I Have No Doubt That (Powell) Will Be Confirmed' Wednesday, January 17, 2001 WASHINGTON — Cautious and uncontroversial, Colin Powell faced an easy Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday on his way to becoming America's first black secretary of state. Setting the tone, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee until President-elect Bush takes office, said, "Without question, General Powell's experience at the highest levels of government and the conduct of foreign and defense policy and his experience in managing large organizations makes him well qualified to be secretary of state." In a statement distributed before the start of the hearing, Biden added: "I have no doubt that you will be confirmed, and I suspect the vote will be unanimous." Yet, Biden said, the open question is the direction in which U.S. foreign policy will move under Bush. "Some of our political leaders," Biden said, "seem suspicious of active American engagement in the world." And: "A troubling new 'ism' has emerged — unilateralism — a belief that America can better project its interest by going it alone." Powell, a retired Army general who inclines toward restraint, is apt to help guide the inexperienced Bush and U.S. foreign policy in a cautious direction. Powell is known to be reluctant to use U.S. military power and to try to limit U.S. commitments abroad to situations in which U.S. national interests are at stake. "If we go in, we go in to win," he wrote in his best-selling 1995 autobiography, "My American Journey." The journey took him from the gritty Hunts Point section of the south Bronx to an education at City College of New York, where he was a dedicated ROTC student, through 35 years in the Army, including service in Vietnam. Powell was President Reagan's national security adviser, then became the youngest person and first black to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His conservative nature is bound to stand him in good stead with Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C. He will return as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after this week and will try to enlist Powell's support for his proposal that religious and other private groups replace the U.S. foreign aid agency in delivering humanitarian assistance abroad. Bush has run into trouble with several of his Cabinet selections. His first choice for labor secretary, Linda Chavez, withdrew under attack; former Sen. John Ashcroft, the attorney general-designate, is under fire as for his views on civil rights and women's rights; the interior secretary-designate, Gale Norton, has been attacked by environmentalists. Powell, on the other hand, achieved the status of folk hero a decade ago when a formidable U.S.-led coalition forced Iraq to reverse its annexation of Kuwait. Some critics grumbled, though, that then-President Bush and Powell should not have halted Operation Desert Storm before Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was overthrown. Saddam remains worrisome to the United States and its allies amid speculation he holds concealed caches of biological and chemical weapons. Last week, Powell was confronted with a report in the Jerusalem Post that he was paid $200,000 — more than twice his usual fee — for a half-hour speech Nov. 2 at Tufts University. Powell rejected any suggestion he had done "something untoward" in accepting the fee arranged by the deputy prime minister of Lebanon, Issam Fares. Fares denounced the story as "distortions and lies" from America's "Zionist lobby." The Washington Post reported in Wednesday's editions that Powell's financial disclosure forms show he has amassed at least $27.3 million since retiring from military service seven years ago, mostly from speaking fees that last year alone brought him $6.7 million. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, named by Bush as his national security adviser, are likely to turn U.S. foreign policy inward with a robust missile defense and a reluctance to use peacekeepers in ethnic conflicts abroad. Last week, however, outgoing Secretary of State Madeleine Albright urged the new administration to "pick up where we left off" in trying to end North Korea's missile program and to keep U.S. peacekeeping troops in the Balkans. "The story in the Balkans is not finished," Albright said at a news conference. "The next administration needs to keep in mind that our presence there is very important." Former Secretary of State George Shultz said after Bush chose Powell and Rice that "you will see them conscious of the importance of strength and very careful in its use." And yet, Shultz said, "What I see is a more active, more professional, more hardheaded foreign policy." foxnews.com