US: Fresh allegations threaten to scupper President Bush's UN nominee, Conor O'Clery reports, amid claim and counter-claim and breaches in party discipline among the Republicans
The spectre of John Bolton chasing a woman through a Moscow hotel, throwing things at her and pounding her bedroom door as he shouted insults, may have been the final straw that halted - and possibly killed - his controversial nomination as US ambassador to the United Nations.
It was enough to cause one Republican senator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has a 10-8 Republican majority, to say he did not feel comfortable voting for President Bush's choice.
This meant that the Republican chairman of the committee, Senator Richard Lugar, had little option, at a heated committee meeting on Tuesday, but to postpone a vote for some weeks and accede to Democratic demands for more time to investigate Mr Bolton's behaviour.
The White House reacted angrily yesterday. Spokesman Scott McClellan accused Senate Democrats of trumping up "unsubstantiated accusations" against Mr Bolton. "I think what you have are Democratic members of the committee who continue to bring up unsubstantiated accusations. These allegations are unfounded," Mr McClellan said.
He singled out Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, the committee's top Democrat, for bringing up the allegations, which he said Mr Bolton had already answered in hours of congressional testimony. "We need to get John Bolton to the United Nations," Mr McClellan added, "because this is an important position. We need to get him there sooner rather than later."
The breach in partisan discipline is a considerable setback for Mr Bush and for conservatives who liked Mr Bolton for his extremely combative attitude to the UN. The new harassment allegation came after senators heard criticism in earlier committee sessions of Mr Bolton's conduct as a senior State Department official, including claims that he was a "serial abuser" of staff and had sought to distort intelligence on Cuba's weapons capacity.
Tuesday's rancorous meeting heard Mr Biden read from an "open letter" from Melody Townsel, a public relations consultant from Dallas, who claimed that Mr Bolton "put me through hell" in a bizarre series of run-ins with him in Moscow in 1994.
At the time, Mr Bolton represented a company working under contract for the US Agency for International Development. Ms Townsel, who was engaged in an agency project in Kyrgyzstan, had questioned the competence of Mr Bolton's firm.
"Mr Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel, throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and genuinely behaving like a madman," she wrote to the committee. "His behaviour back in 1994 wasn't just unforgivable, it was pathological."
Mr Biden said congressional aides had obtained corroboration of the woman's complaints, which also included a claim that Mr Bolton had falsely accused her of misusing funds and threatened that she would go to jail.
When Mr Lugar said there was no time to look into new allegations and pressed for a vote, Republican Senator George Voinovich from Ohio surprised everyone by saying he did not feel comfortable voting for Mr Bolton.
"I've heard enough today that gives me some real concern about Mr Bolton," he said. Lincoln Chafee and Chuck Hagel, also Republicans, expressed reservations too.
A conservative group that supports Mr Bolton, MoveAmericaForward, is campaigning against Mr Voinovich in Ohio with radio ads attacking his integrity.
The ad features a married couple. The wife says: "Honey, did you hear how disloyal Senator Voinovich was to Republicans and President Bush? He shows up at the last minute and stabs the president and Republicans right in the back."
The husband replies: " . . . The United Nations needs reform, we need someone who will stand up for the United States and fight the UN's corruption and anti-Americanism. It seems like Senator Voinovich has become a traitor to the Republican Party."
Long-time observers in Washington called the developments at the committee hearing "stunning" in a bitterly partisan Congress. Mr Chafee said afterwards he would have voted against Mr Bolton: "The dynamic has changed. A lot of reservations surfaced."