Speculation On Bolton Replacement At U.N.

Speculation on a new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations to succeed John Bolton is focusing on the current U.S. Ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and a former U.S. deputy ambassador at the U.N., Richard Williamson.

But there are a number of other Republicans — and even some Democrats — whose names have been floated as well among diplomats at U.N. headquarters.

The Republican speculation includes U.S. Rep. Jim Leach, a 15-term lawmaker from Iowa and opponent of the war in Iraq who lost his seat in the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in November, and two undersecretaries at the State Department, Nicholas Burns and Paula Dobriansky.

On the Democratic side, two former senators have been mentioned: George Mitchell of Maine and Sam Nunn of Georgia.

"The short list of possible replacements gets longer every day," said CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk from the U.N., "because there are delicate negotiations taking place on Iraq, Iran, Darfur, North Korea and the Middle East. The challenge is going to be to find a replacement that receives bipartisan support for confirmation and a diplomat who can get up to speed quickly."

President Bush accepted Bolton's resignation on Monday, angered that a few Republicans joined Democrats in preventing his nomination from ever reaching the floor of the U.S. Senate. Mr. Bush appointed Bolton to the U.N. job in August 2005 when Congress was in recess, but his term is about to expire. With his long fight for confirmation going nowhere, Bolton decided to resign.

Khalilzad, an Afghan-born Sunni Muslim and Republican insider, took up the Iraq post in June 2005 after serving as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 following the fall of the Taliban. In early November, a senior U.S. State Department official said he was likely to leave Iraq as soon as the end of the year but was more likely to remain through the spring.

ABC News reported Tuesday that Khalilzad will soon return to the United States and is under "strong consideration" to be the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, quoting a senior Bush administration official.

With the Bush administration expected to embark on a new Iraq policy following Wednesday's report by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, however, some diplomats question whether the president would want to change ambassadors in Baghdad at this time.

Williamson, now a partner in the Chicago law firm of Mayer Brown Rowe and Maw, was a deputy ambassador at the U.N. in 2002-2003 and ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva in 2004. He would have an easier time stepping into the U.N. job quickly than any of the others mentioned because of his recent stint at the U.S. Mission and his knowledge of U.N. operations.

Williamson was recently in Washington, where he reportedly spoke to several senior State Department officials.

Both Khalilzad and Williamson have strong international and political backgrounds.

Khalilzad served at the National Security Council as special assistant to the president and senior director for Islamic Outreach and Southwest Asia, and as head of the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Department of Defense.

Williamson served as assistant secretary of state for international organizations in the State Department from 1988-89. On the political front, he is a former chairman of the Illinois Republican Party and is currently on the board of directors of the International Republican Institute.