Nominee OKd After Inquiry for State Dept. Post

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday approved Lawrence S. Eagleburger’s nomination for the No. 2 position at the State Department, but only after Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) scrutinized Eagleburger’s four-year association with Henry A. Kissinger for possible conflicts of interest.

President Bush’s nomination of Eagleburger to be deputy secretary of state was approved on a vote of 19 to 0 and sent to the full Senate.

Helms said his queries into Eagleburger’s dealings with a consulting firm run by the former secretary of state were not nit-picking, given the attention paid to John Tower’s $1 million in earnings from defense contractors during the confirmation process into Tower’s nomination to be defense secretary.

The senator also jabbed at Eagleburger’s $900,000 in earnings from Kissinger’s firm and an affiliate, commenting that the assessments he gave to multinational corporations on international affairs “must be extraordinary advice.”

The firms Eagleburger dealt with, according to disclosure forms filed with the Senate, include Anheuser-Busch, the South Korean conglomerate Daewoo Corp., H. J. Heinz, the Italian car maker Fiat, ITT, A. B. Volvo, Union Carbide and Coca-Cola.

Helms questioned whether Eagleburger’s work for Kissinger’s firm conflicted with laws that require those who lobby for foreign governments to register their activities with the U.S. government.

Eagleburger stressed to the committee that he had never lobbied the U.S. government on behalf of any of the firm’s clients and had strictly abided by the law.