Bolton, a key Bush hard-liner, steps down as UN envoy

WASHINGTON -- At the start of a crucial week of challenges to President Bush's Iraq policy, the administration lost one of its leading hawks when John Bolton, the tough-talking ambassador to the United Nations who became a hero to conservatives for his staunch defense of American foreign policy, announced his resignation yesterday.

Bolton, who has served in his post for 16 months while awaiting a Senate confirmation battle, said he would not accept another job in the administration. The president had been seeking ways to keep Bolton on his team in some capacity, even without Senate approval.

Bolton's resignation, just a month after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced he was stepping down, represents the departure of another early advocate of the Iraq war and adds to a sense of upheaval in Washington this week. An independent bipartisan panel on Iraq will release its assessment of the war tomorrow, and the Pentagon is undertaking major reassessments of its own Iraq policies.

In another key departure, Zalmay Khalilzad , the current US ambassador in Iraq, will be replaced early next year with a career diplomat, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Khalilzad was also an early supporter of regime change in Iraq. He was one of 18 signatories -- alongside Bolton and Rumsfeld -- of a 1998 letter to President Clinton calling for the overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"What you are seeing is the collapse of the neoconservative policy that has guided this administration since 9/11," said Joseph Cirincione , a former staff member of the House Armed Services Committee who is now at the Center for American Progress , a liberal think tank .

Nile Gardiner , a foreign policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, called Bolton's departure "a huge blow for the Bush administration."

But he added: "With the political winds of change blowing through Washington following the congressional elections, it would have been a huge uphill struggle to retain Bolton in the administration."

Bolton had become a polarizing figure. He was loved by conservatives for his no-nonsense critiques of the United Nations's bloated bureaucracy, which continued in more muted form through his ambassadorship. He was equally hated by liberals for allegedly exaggerating intelligence reports to support his hawkish policies in his previous post as the State Department's undersecretary for arms control and nonproliferation.

Controversy over those allegations stalled Bolton's nomination in the Senate last year. But Bush bypassed Congress and gave Bolton a temporary recess appointment for a term that expires at the end of this year.

Last month, Bush nominated Bolton again, hoping that the outgoing Republican-controlled Senate would confirm him. But those hopes were dashed when Senator Lincoln D. Chafee , the moderate Republican from Rhode Island, announced that he would not support Bolton, giving Democrats enough votes to block the nomination.

Yesterday, Bush lashed out at what he said were a handful of senators who prevented Bolton's nomination from reaching the Senate floor, saying that "their stubborn obstructionism ill serves our country," and that their "tactics will disrupt our diplomatic work at a sensitive and important time."

Administration officials had been exploring other ways to keep Bolton working at the United Nations, including appointing him as a deputy national security adviser and sending him back to New York as acting ambassador, according to Senate aides and State Department officials.

But such a move would have invited legal challenges and angered congressional leaders.

One State Department official who has been closely following Bolton's career said that the Bush administration had finally "accepted the reality" that he would not be confirmed, and that Senate confirmation is a necessary part of the process.

Administration officials declined to speculate on a successor, though people outside the administration began floating names such as R. Nicholas Burns, the State Department's undersecretary for politicial affairs, and Paula J. Dobriansky , undersecretary for democracy and global affairs.

Some analysts saw Bolton's departure as a victory for the moderates who want to change course on Iraq by scaling back Bush's ambitious "democracy agenda" in the Middle East, and by engaging in direct talks with Syria and Iran. Bolton's departure is also being interpreted as a defeat for Vice President Dick Cheney, a close ally of Bolton's, who has argued for staying the course in Iraq and has aggressively opposed talks with Syria and Iran.

"Cheney just lost another piece on the [chess] board," Cirincione said.

In a Dec. 1 letter to Bush, Bolton thanked the president for giving him the chance to serve but said, "After careful consideration, I have concluded that my service in your administration should end when the current recess appointment expires."

Yesterday, the two men met briefly at the Oval Office, and Bush told Bolton he had done a "fabulous job."

Bolton spent much of his year as ambassador focused on changing the UN's structure. Unable to get the management changes he sought, Bolton threatened to block passage of the UN's two-year budget at the end of 2005, declaring that "business as usual isn't going to accomplish that revolution."

In a compromise, the UN instead adopted a six-month budget.

Bolton later won over some critics by making a point of meeting face to face with as many of his counterparts as he could, seeing 120 fellow ambassadors, according to an aide.

The son of a Baltimore fireman, Bolton, 58, was educated at Yale, where he honed an aggressive negotiating style and a penchant for blunt pronouncements.

"There is no United Nations," he famously declared in a 1994 speech. "There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that's the United States, when it suits our interests, and when we can get others to go along."

Bolton was also a key skeptic of international treaties, asserting that they were only politically, not legally, binding.

As ambassador, he muted some of his language but still expressed himself like a man impatient with the usual diplomatic niceties.

"UN reform is not a one-night stand," he quipped shortly after his appointment in August 2005. "UN reform is forever."

Bolton's colleagues yesterday offered cautious praise.

"I would say that we have learned to work together, and I think we have respected each other," said Jean-Marc de la Sablière , France's ambassador .

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan , who had a tense relationship with Bolton, told reporters that Bolton did what he could on the instructions that he was given. But he also added that it is important that "the ambassadors understand that to get concessions, they have to make concessions."