WASHINGTON — President Bush will sidestep Democratic opposition to his nomination of John R. Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by making a recess appointment not subject to Senate confirmation, a senior administration official said Friday.
The appointment, which is likely to further roil relations with congressional Democrats, will be announced before the president leaves Washington on Tuesday for a five-week working vacation at his Texas ranch, said the official, who requested anonymity because Bush had not yet publicly disclosed his intentions.
The president was expected to proceed despite the disclosure that Bolton had made a false statement to a Senate committee. Democrats made a fresh appeal Friday that Bush not bypass the confirmation process by using his power to appoint Bolton during the monthlong congressional recess that starts this weekend.
The White House and State Department said the incorrect information Bolton submitted to lawmakers was an unintentional mistake. They emphasized the need to send him to the United Nations before the world body began its annual deliberations Sept. 14.
"It's a critical time to be moving forward on this," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said. "The United Nations will be having their General Assembly meeting in September, and it's important that we get our permanent representative in place."
A recess appointment would take effect immediately and would remain in effect until January 2007.
The political standoff escalated after Democrats alleged that Bolton, a blunt-spoken diplomat favored by many conservatives but regarded with suspicion by critics of administration policy, had misled lawmakers.
On a routine, sworn questionnaire that the Senate committee requires of nominees, Bolton answered "no" when asked whether he had been interviewed by an inspector general of a government agency or a grand jury during the past five years.
On Thursday, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying he had learned that Bolton, the former undersecretary of State for arms control, had been interviewed during that five-year period by the inspectors general of the State Department and the CIA.
The interviews were connected to efforts by the two agencies to determine how assertions that Iraq sought to purchase uranium from Niger had found their way into the president's 2003 State of the Union address.
