WASHINGTON, 27 January 2005 — The US Senate voted to approve Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state yesterday, but only after two days of strenuous questioning on the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq.

In a White House press briefing yesterday, President Bush spoke angrily about the Democrats’ tough treatment of her during the Senate hearing. Bush had hoped to swear in Rice last Thursday, the day he was inaugurated for a second term, but after a contentious hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senate Democrats delayed her confirmation.

The Senate voted 85 to 13 to confirm Rice, who succeeds Colin Powell as America’s top diplomat. She is the first nominee for secretary of state to receive any “no” votes since Alexander M. Haig in 1981, and the first black woman to hold the job.

Plans were being made for her to be sworn in at the White House late last night and take her place in the State Department this morning. She will have a more elaborate swearing-in by Bush at the agency tomorrow.

Many Senate Democrats opposed the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state on Tuesday. They accused her of deceiving Congress and called her an “architect of blunders” in the Iraq war, and used her nomination to voice their objections against President Bush’s Iraq policy.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, called Rice “a key member of the national security team that developed and justified the rationale for war, and it’s been a catastrophic failure, a continuing quagmire.”

Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minnesota, said Rice “misled Americans everywhere about the situation in Iraq, before and after that war began.” He added: “I really don’t like being lied to repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally.”

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Indiana, said Rice “has been a principle architect of policy errors that have tragically undermined our prospects for success” in Iraq. “This is no ordinary incompetence. Men and women are dying as a result of these mistakes.”

Republicans defended Rice, who for four years has been Bush’s national security adviser.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas accused Democrats of “inappropriate partisan attacks against a nominee who deserves our respect,” and Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska, proclaimed it “a nomination all of America can be proud of.”

Diplomats in Washington, however, are cautiously optimistic that Rice will restrain ideological activists at the Pentagon now that she has been confirmed as secretary of state. They applauded her decision to bring senior career officers back to State Department, including Robert Zoellick as deputy secretary, and career officer R. Nicholas Bush as No. 3, along with several highly regarded career officers to key posts at the undersecretary and assistant secretary levels.

Also yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee narrowly approved the nomination of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, sending to the full Senate an appointment made controversial by the Bush administration’s policies on torture. The nomination is so controversial that all of the Judiciary Committee’s Democratic members voted against Gonzales.