Bush Names John Danforth as New U.N. AmbassadorROME (Reuters) - Former Republican Sen. John Danforth, the Missouri Republican who has served as U.S. peace envoy to war-torn Sudan since 2001, was nominate on Friday to replace John Negroponte as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
His nomination by President Bush, announced during a presidential visit to Rome, requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate. The U.N. ambassador's post became vacant last month when Negroponte was named U.S. ambassador to Iraq. A spokesman for Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana said the panel would move quickly on Bush's nomination of Danforth, a political moderate respected by both Republicans and Democrats. A lawyer, Episcopal minister and heir to the Ralston-Purina fortune, Danforth was best known during his 18-year career in the Senate for leading the battle to confirm Clarence Thomas as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice in 1991. He retired from the Senate four years later. Danforth, 68, went on to conduct an investigation into the FBI's role in the 1993 Waco disaster in which scores of men, women and children were killed at the compound of the Branch Davidian religious group in Texas.
In September 2001, Bush named him peace envoy to Sudan, a country torn by 21 years of civil war. Danforth's nomination for the U.N. ambassadorship comes as the Sudanese government and the country's southern rebels prepare for a final phase of talks to end Africa's longest running civil war. © Copyright 2004 Reuters. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Reuters or its third-party content providers. Any copying, republication, or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
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