US: New allegations surfaced yesterday against two figures under fire on Capitol Hill: State Department official John Bolton, the Bush administration's nominee as US ambassador to the UN; and House majority leader Tom DeLay.
US-British talks in 2003 to force Libya to surrender its nuclear programme only succeeded after British officials "at the highest level" persuaded the White House to keep Bolton off the negotiating team, Newsweek claimed, quoting British sources.
A crucial issue was Col Muammar Gadafy's demand that if Libya abandoned its weapons of mass destruction programme the US in turn would drop its goal of regime change.
Mr Bolton was unwilling to support this compromise and the White House agreed to keep him "out of the loop" as the deal was made. Newsweek also reported that Mr Bolton was two years ago singled out for criticism by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as an impediment to negotiations over Iran.
The New York Times yesterday published extracts from internal State Department e-mails giving new details of harsh exchanges over Mr Bolton's attempts to publicly accuse Cuba of developing biological weapons, despite intelligence analysts doubts.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post claimed that a business-class air fare for a trip to the UK by Mr DeLay was charged to the American Express card issued to Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist at the centre of a federal criminal and tax probe.
Other expenses, including golf at St Andrews in Scotland, were charged to a different credit card belonging to a second lobbyist. House ethics rules bar Congress members from accepting travel and related expenses from registered lobbyists. DeLay has said his expenses for the trip were paid by a non-profit organization and he had no way of knowing that any lobbyist might have given financial support.
