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Bush urges senate to confirm bolton for UN { April 21 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/21/politics/21cnd-bolton.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/21/politics/21cnd-bolton.html
April 21, 2005
Bush Urges Senate to Confirm Bolton
By DOUGLAS JEHL
and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, April 21 - President Bush offered a vigorous defense today of John R. Bolton, his nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, signaling that the White House will fight for his confirmation in the face of wavering Republican support.
Mr. Bush used a gathering of insurance agents and brokers, where his scheduled address was on Social Security, to stand up for Mr. Bolton, whose nomination appears to be in danger.
"I welcome you to the nation's capital, where sometimes politics gets in the way of doing the people's business," Mr. Bush said early on. "Take John Bolton, the good man I nominated to represent our country at the United Nations.
"John's distinguished career in service to our nation demonstrates that he is the right man at the right time for this important assignment. I urge the Senate to put aside politics and confirm John Bolton to the United Nations."
Mr. Bolton, who is known to have the strong support of Vice President Dick Cheney, will have to wait until at least the second week of May before his nomination comes again before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which unexpectedly postponed a vote earlier this week after some Republican panel members expressed reservations about the nominee. The White House is clearly worried that support for him could further erode in the next two weeks.
Senator Lincoln Chafee, the Rhode Island Republican who had earlier said he was inclined to support Mr. Bolton, said Wednesday that he wanted to consult with his colleagues in the wake of the stormy meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday at which Democrats forced the postponement of a vote. Among the committee's 10 Republicans, Mr. Chafee and 2 others have now voiced significant doubts about whether Mr. Bolton has the temperament and credibility to win confirmation.
Asked Wednesday if he was now less inclined to support the nomination, Mr. Chafee said, "That would be accurate."
Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican of Ohio, sided Tuesday with the Democrats, forcing the panel's chairman, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, to put off a vote.
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, another Republican on the panel, also made clear during Tuesday's deliberations that he was troubled enough by some of the accusations against Mr. Bolton to possibly not vote for him on the Senate floor.
The White House continues to dismiss the charges as unfounded. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in Lithuania, endorsed him anew on Wednesday as "the right person to be the United States ambassador to the United Nations at what is a really quite critical time."
But Democrats made clear their belief that Mr. Bolton had been dealt a serious and perhaps fatal blow.
"My hope would be that the administration, after yesterday, would say that he's damaged goods," Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut said. "You'd think at some point, they'd wait a few days or whatever and decide this nomination isn't worth it to have a one-vote victory." Mr. Dodd said there must be other "highly qualified, conservative Republicans to get appointed to this position that don't bring the luggage that Mr. Bolton will to this job."
Mr. Chafee said that Mr. Bolton's prospects were "hard to predict" but said he expected that "the administration is really going to put some pressure on Senator Voinovich. Then it comes to the rest of us that have had some reservations."
The nomination appears to hang on what emerges on several points.
One is whether the Senate panel substantiates accusations from a former contract worker on an Agency for International Development project that Mr. Bolton, as a private lawyer hired by her employer, tried to intimidate her in 1994. A co-worker has corroborated some of the charges made by the former contract worker, Melody Townsel, while the president of the company has challenged some of her claims.
A second point involves documents sought by the committee from the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, to clarify conflicting accounts about Mr. Bolton's role in several matters, including his attempts while working as an under secretary of state to seek the transfer of several employees, and his requests for identifying information about American officials who were mentioned in or participated in conversations intercepted by the National Security Agency. He addressed some of these issues in his public testimony last week, but Democrats have said there is evidence some of his answers were less than candid.
Finally, Mr. Bolton's prospects may hinge on calculations made by the nominee himself, or by the White House, and particularly Vice President Cheney, who is regarded as his main patron. For now, President Bush and his team appear to see the battle as a test of wills, but new information, or the potential for another bruising hearing, may turn his cause into an unacceptable political liability. Mr. Chafee told CNN that the committee's Republicans might consider whether to recommend that the nomination be withdrawn.
"I think Republicans, we ought to get together and talk about this," Mr. Chafee said.
In interviews on Wednesday, some Senate aides said they would not be surprised if the nomination was ultimately withdrawn. But many Republican senators continued to voice their support for Mr. Bolton.
"These allegations have come in; there is a feeling they have to be investigated," Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said, characterizing the views of most Republican senators. "But it doesn't mean they bail out on him. I know of no Republican senator who says, 'I'm therefore voting against him.' "
Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, declared himself a "strong supporter," acknowledging only that the delay made final approval "more challenging from a scheduling standpoint."
But other Republicans, including Mr. Lugar, have voiced little enthusiasm for Mr. Bolton, making clear that they were willing to accept him mainly out of loyalty to Mr. Bush and the belief that nominees should be given the benefit of the doubt.
The new account that corroborated Ms. Townsel's complaints against Mr. Bolton was offered by Uno Ramat, who worked with her on an Agency for International Development project in Kyrgyzstan in 1994. Mr. Ramat said Mr. Bolton, who was then a lawyer representing Ms. Townsel's and Mr. Ramat's employer, International Business and Technical Consultants Inc., flew to Moscow to counter Ms. Townsel's complaints that the company was slow in providing cash to pay suppliers.
"He was very intimidating and nasty," Mr. Ramat said in a telephone interview from Toronto. "He terrorized the office, he really did."
Mr. Ramat also said he recalled a series of phone calls from Ms. Townsel, who was in Moscow, complaining of Mr. Bolton's behavior. He said she complained at the time, as she has in recent days, that Mr. Bolton followed her around the hotel, pounded on her door and threatened her.
But in a letter to the Foreign Relations Committee, the president of International Business and Technical Consultants, Jayant S. Kalotra, disputed Ms. Townsel's allegations. Mr. Kalotra said in the letter that his company found Mr. Bolton to be "very intelligent, hard working, loyal and highly ethical."
Scott Shane contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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