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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.
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.