Missouri's Danforth picked for U.N. post

ROME -- President Bush is turning to former Missouri Sen. John Danforth to make the administration's Iraq case in the United Nations, choosing a Republican who was a Senate ally of his father and has been a troubleshooter for both Democratic and Republican presidents.

If confirmed by the Senate, as seems virtually certain, Danforth will succeed the current U.N. ambassador, John Negroponte, who will be moving to Iraq as Bush's ambassador to the new government there this summer.

Since 2001, Danforth has been Bush's special envoy to war-torn Sudan, where he has tried to mediate a peace agreement. He served in the Senate for 18 years and was on Bush's short list as a possible vice presidential choice in 2000.

The president made the announcement that he would nominate Danforth in a statement released while he was in Rome on a three-day European trip. The U.N.'s role in post-occupation Iraq will be a major topic in Bush's discussions with European leaders this weekend.

An heir to the Ralston Purina fortune, the 67-year-old is also a licensed Episcopal priest and a graduate of Princeton University and Yale University's law school.

While in the Senate, he helped lead the confirmation battle for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, a former Danforth assistant who was nominated to the high court by the first President Bush. The senator's support was considered crucial in winning confirmation after sexual harassment accusations against Thomas by former aide Anita Hill.

Danforth is a political moderate who is popular among conservatives -- for his anti-abortion stance among other reasons.

He was once quoted as saying he joined the Republican Party for "the same reason you sometimes choose which movie to see -- the one with the shortest line."

JOHN DANFORTH

Age, birth date: 67, Sept. 5, 1936

Education: Graduated Princeton University in 1963, received degrees from Yale Divinity School and Yale Law School.

Experience: Private law practice in St. Louis, 1963-69, 1995-present; attorney general of Missouri, 1969-76; U.S. senator, 1976-1995; appointed in 1999 by Attorney General Janet Reno to be special counsel investigating government's conduct in Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas; tapped by President Bush to be special envoy to Sudan, September 2001.

Family: Wife, Sally; daughters, Eleanor, Mary, Dorothy (D.D.), Johanna; son, Thomas.

SOURCE: AP