AFTER RUMSFELD, BOLTON

By Ray Fleming JOHN Bolton, President Bush's Ambassador to the United Nations, became the second senior casualty of last month's mid–term election yesterday, when it became clear that the new Democratic–controlled Senate would not approve the continuation of his appointment to the UN. Mr Bolton's nomination was opposed in the Senate when it was first made in 2005 but President Bush went ahead with a provisional appointment that was due for formal confirmation this month. Mr Bolton's instructions were to “reform” the UN but his bulldozing and confrontational tactics made it unlikely that he would ever achieve that objective. Within weeks of arriving in New York he tabled more than one hundred amendments to proposals on reform that other UN ambassadors had been working on for two years. The result was a botched proposal that got nowhere. Recently, however, he successfully led the negotiations for the UN peacekeeping presence in Lebanon and helped to steer the Security Council resolution on sanctions against North Korea. It was always unlikely that John Bolton would make a successful ambassador at the UN. In 1994 he said at a public meeting that ”There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States.” He never recanted and when President Bush named him for the UN job more than 100 former US ambassadors signed a letter urging the Senate to reject his nomination.