WASHINGTON, 1 May 2005 — John Bolton, President George Bush’s nominee to become ambassador to the United Nations, is known as a “conservative’s conservative,” Back in 1994, Bolton said: “There is no such thing as the United Nations,” and said contemptuously, “The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”
His appointment has concerned many who knew and worked with him. Sixty-two former American diplomats, most of whom served in Republican administrations, have signed a letter urging the Senate to reject Bolton’s nomination. In their opinion, Bolton’s “past activities and statements indicate conclusively that he is the wrong man for this position at a time when the UN is entering a critically important phase of modernization, seeking to promote economic development and democratic reforms and searching for ways to cope better with proliferation crises and a spurt of natural disasters and internal conflicts.”
They claim Bolton has an “exceptional record” of opposing US efforts to improve national security through arms control, and charged he has made “unsubstantiated claims” that Cuba and Syria were working on biological weapons.
In addition, it was Bolton who spearheaded a successful campaign to prevent the Senate from ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, clearing the way for increased testing of nuclear weapons. He led both the US withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the US renunciation of the International Criminal Court. Bolton hailed his announcement that Bush was taking the United States’ signature off the ICC treaty as “the happiest moment” of his government service.
His combative stance toward Pyongyang caused the North Koreans to denounce Bolton as “scum.” When asked why he opposed offering North Korea incentives to abandon its nuclear weapons program, Bolton replied, “I don’t do carrots.”
Now, a fourth senior member of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s team at the State Department expressed strong doubts on Friday about Bolton’s nomination as ambassador to the UN.
The official, A. Elizabeth Jones, is a veteran diplomat who left office in February as assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia. Jones joins Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s chief of staff; Carl W. Ford, Jr., who headed the department’s intelligence bureau; and John R. Wolf, who was assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, as those who have now expressed strong concerns regarding his nomination.
Powell is said to have expressed his own concerns about Bolton in private conversations with at least two Republican senators.
“I don’t know if he’s incapable of negotiation, but he’s unwilling,” Jones said in an interview. She said she believed that “the fundamental problem,” if Bolton were to become United Nations ambassador, would be reluctance on his part to make the kind of minor, symbolic concessions necessary to build consensus among other governments and maintain the American position. Thus implying he prefers the use of sticks to carrots.
Jones was speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is reviewing Bolton’s nomination. They are holding closed-door interviews with former senior intelligence officials who clashed with Bolton during his tenure as under secretary of state for arms control.
Meanwhile, President Bush reiterated his support for Bolton as the US ambassador to the United Nations on Friday, saying he believed that Bolton has the talents and capabilities, and that Bolton had been previously confirmed four times by the Senate.
