The influential Senator Jesse Helms is preparing to block yet another ambassadorial appointment by President Clinton, worsening the strained relations between the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress.
Senator Helms, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee which scrutinises all nominations of ambassadors, has said that he will investigate "serious charges of ethical misconduct" against former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun before allowing her name to go forward as ambassador to New Zealand.
Ms Mosley-Braun, who was the first African-American senator, lost her Illinois seat last year after a bitter campaign during which she was criticised for making seven trips to Nigeria which included a meeting with former dictator, Gen Sani Abacha. Her 1992 campaign finances were also investigated for abuses by the Internal Revenue Service.
Vice-President Al Gore has accused Senator Helms of seeking "partisan revenge". This is a reference to an episode when Ms Mosley-Braun and Senator Helms clashed in the Senate over the use of the Confederate flag by an organisation which he supported. He later lost the vote on the issue.
Senator Helms has already prevented the President's appointments of ambassadors to Mexico and Brazil. They appointees had both clashed with Senator Helms before their nominations. Mr Clinton got around the senator's opposition to the openly gay businessman Mr James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg by waiting until Congress was in recess to push though the appointment.
Mr Clinton has called Senator Helms's latest objection to one of his appointments as a "new isolationism". The White House is still seething over the successful efforts of Senator Helms and other conservative Republicans to vote down the nuclear test ban treaty last week.
Meanwhile, aides to the Republican presidential candidate, Governor George Bush, have strongly denied charges that he had once been arrested on charges of cocaine possession. The charges, attributed to anonymous sources, are made in a new book by a freelance journalist. The book claims that Mr Bush was arrested in 1972 and that his father was able to get the charges expunged from the court record by a friendly judge.
Ms Jean Becker, a spokeswoman for Governor Bush, said "it absolutely did not happen."