Former senator is picked to be new U.N. ambassador

Confirmation by the Senate seems certain.
ROME (AP) -- 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.
Working in Sudan
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.
His background
A lawyer with a practice in St. Louis, Danforth, 67, is a former attorney general of Missouri. An heir to the Ralston Purina fortune, he is also a licensed Episcopal minister and a graduate of Princeton University and Yale University's law school.
Bush nominated Negroponte in April to be the ambassador to Iraq's interim government, which is to gain sovereignty June 30.
Tapped before
Danforth has been tapped before to tackle complex issues since his 1995 retirement from the Senate.
During the Clinton administration, he acted as special counsel appointed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno. He conducted a 14-month inquiry into the deaths in 1993 of about 80 Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. His investigation cleared the FBI of wrongdoing.
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.
Political moderate
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."
He is married with five adult children.
While in Rome, Bush met with Pope John Paul II and had dinner with a top ally on Iraq, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Today, the president heads to Paris to meet with one of his sharpest war critics, French President Jacques Chirac.
Opposition in Italy
Despite Berlusconi's backing, and his decision to send 3,000 Italian troops to Iraq, polls show that a majority of Italians oppose the U.S.-led war and occupation of Iraq, a sentiment common throughout western Europe.
Bush is on a three-day trip to Italy and France to help commemorate the June 1944 liberation of Rome and the allied D-Day invasion of Normandy. He was also using the trip -- and an international economic summit next week in Sea Island, Ga. -- to try to build more support among leading nations for a new U.N. resolution to deal with post-occupation Iraq.
Meanwhile, a small group of stone-throwing demonstrators clashed with police at a march Friday by tens of thousands of people to protest Bush's visit to the Italian capital, with streets sealed off and guarded by officers in riot gear.
Tall metal gates and paramilitary jeeps and trucks blocked a main thoroughfare leading to Piazza Venezia, the heart of the capital, as the marchers approached within a few dozen yards of Berlusconi's residence.
Two police officers were bruised when they were struck with stones and bottles, the Italian news agency Apcom said. Officials at police headquarters could not be immediately reached for details on the clash.
Cobblestone alleys were sealed off to prevent any violent protesters from breaking away from the march and rushing some of the 10,000 police deployed along the route.
Near Circus Maximus, the ancient Roman games field, about 20 demonstrators in black hoods taunted police and threw rocks. The officers set off a couple of tear gas canisters and the demonstrators darted away across the field.
Far from Bush
The march route was far from Bush's motorcade.
Protest organizers said that 150,000 marchers turned out, while police put the crowd at about 25,000. In the weeks before the war began in 2003, an anti-war march in Rome drew 1 million participants.
"The police won't let us go through because they don't want us to demonstrate," said Fulvio Paolocci, a university student who was turned back by police at barricaded Piazza Venezia.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.