Senate Committee Approves Negroponte for U.N. Post

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee cleared the way Thursday for John D. Negroponte to lead an anti-terrorism campaign at the United Nations, brushing aside accusations that the veteran diplomat condoned and concealed human rights abuses by the government of Honduras in the 1980s when he was ambassador there.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, even Negroponte’s harshest critics agreed that the United States can no longer leave vacant the head spot on its U.N. delegation, open since the end of the Clinton administration. President Bush named Negroponte to be U.N. ambassador in March.

The panel approved the nomination 14 to 3 and sent it to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote, which is expected within the next few days.

Set in front of each committee member was a 6-inch-thick binder containing CIA and State Department reports and clippings from The Times, the Baltimore Sun, the New York Times and other publications detailing accusations of torture, rape and murder by a Honduran military squad. Negroponte was accused of minimizing or ignoring the allegations in his reports to Washington.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), quoting from an unclassified summary of a CIA report, said there was a Honduran government death squad operating during Negroponte’s 1981-85 tenure as ambassador.

“You don’t seem to remember too much,” she chided Negroponte, who earlier in the hearing declared, “To this day, I did not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras.”

“When you are there--which I have no doubt you will be--at the U.N., and you stand up and you fight for human rights and individual rights and the right of people to feel free . . . I want you to have that credibility,” Boxer said.

She and Sens. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) and Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) cast the votes against Negroponte.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the committee chairman, said the staff has conducted a detailed investigation of what Negroponte knew and what he reported to Congress.

“The committee’s focus here has been on the question: Did the ambassador testify fully and accurately to Congress?” Biden said.

Later, Biden expressed sympathy for Negroponte’s situation.

“I think you were in a tough position--a little bit between a rock and a hard spot,” he said. “I don’t think there is any concrete evidence that you, in fact, altered reporting or hid human rights abuses.”

Negroponte flatly denied covering up abuses in his reporting to Congress.