Senate Confirms Ambassador to U.N.

Without debate, the Senate unanimously confirmed the nomination of veteran diplomat John D. Negroponte to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The vote put a quiet end to a six-month controversy over charges that he concealed human rights abuses by the government of Honduras when he was ambassador to that country in the early 1980s.

The action by the full Senate came one day after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee determined that in the aftermath of the New York and Washington terrorist attacks, the United States could not afford a vacancy at the head of its U.N. mission.