March 7 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush named State Department arms control official John Bolton, a critic of the effectiveness of the United Nations, as the next U.S. ambassador to the world body.

Bolton, a 56-year-old undersecretary of state, would replace John Danforth, a former Republican U.S. senator from Missouri who left the UN post in January to return to his home state after seven months on the job. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the appointment in a phone call today.

``The president and I have asked John to do this work because he knows how to get things done,'' Rice said in announcing the selection of Bolton. ``He is a tough-minded diplomat. He has a strong record of success and he has a proven track record of effective multilateralism.''

Rice credited Bolton with helping build a coalition of nations to fight trafficking in chemical, biological and nuclear materials, and with getting Libya to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program.

The U.S. Senate must confirm Bolton's nomination as 25th U.S. ambassador to the UN. A hearing on Bolton's nomination isn't likely before the congressional Easter recess, according to Andy Fisher, a spokesman for Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana. Anne Patterson has been serving as acting U.S. envoy since Danforth departed.

UN Critic

In nominating Bolton, Rice is backing a ``leading critic of the UN,'' former State Department policy planner and Pentagon adviser Lee Feinstein said in an interview.

``He has been very critical of the UN in his writings and is the most forceful critic of multilateral institutions that the administration has,'' Feinstein said. ``He would be taking up this position at a time when the UN is engaged in some serious self-reflection and has been trying to reach out to the U.S., including conservative political forces.''

Corruption

Corruption in the UN-run program that let Iraq sell oil to buy food and medicine under the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has prompted six separate investigations and calls from about one in seven U.S. House members for Annan to resign.

Created by the UN Security Council, the oil-for-food initiative allowed Hussein to sell $64 billion worth of oil from 1996 until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Iraq skimmed more than $17 billion from the program through oil smuggling and graft involving humanitarian goods, U.S. congressional investigators concluded in November.

``Secretary Rice assured the secretary-general that Mr. Bolton would be coming to work with us on UN reform,'' UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York today.

Bolton said today that he has ``over the years, written critically about the UN.'' Bolton said in 1994 that ``if the UN secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.''

Paying for the UN

The U.S. isn't legally obligated to pay an assessment to the UN, and the U.S. Congress should provide the UN with funds ``when it is in the national interest to do so and when others are meeting their commitments as well,'' Bolton, a lawyer, argued in an American Enterprise Institute publication in 1997.

Bolton also wrote an article entitled ``Kofi Annan's UN Power Grab,'' published by AEI, a Washington-based think tank, in 1999, saying that Annan's claim that only the UN Security Council can legitimately authorize the use of force internationally might inhibit U.S. ability to use force to protect its own interests.

Bolton also asked in the 1999 article why ``the Annan doctrine'' went ``unrebuked'' by former Democratic President Bill Clinton in an address to the General Assembly.

``The UN is substantially overextended and in danger of becoming more so,'' Bolton said in January 2000 testimony before the House International Relations Committee. ``It is involved in conflicts, or is considering involvement, where it has neither the authority nor the competence to be effective, and its instinctive reaction to difficulties it has encountered has been simply to do more of the same.''

U.S. Leadership

Today Bolton said, ``I have consistently stressed in my writings that American leadership is critical to the success of the UN, an effective UN.''

``My record, over many years, demonstrates clear support for effective multilateral diplomacy,'' Bolton said today. ``Working closely with others is essential to ensuring a safer world.'

Bolton's nomination comes as the U.S. presses the Security Council for adoption of a resolution authorizing a peacekeeping force in Sudan, seeks the complete withdrawal of Syrian troops form Lebanon and deals with the growing nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea.

Bolton has said that North Korea poses a threat to global security because it may try to sell nuclear-weapons technology overseas.

``The capability that they have constitutes a global problem,'' Bolton told reporters at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo on Feb. 10.

Bolton has spoken out in support of regime change in Iran telling the New York Times in an interview in September that unrest among Iranians about their economy and religious government might bring a ``revolution from below.'' Bolton also said that, when South Africa and Ukraine changed governments, they both got rid of their nuclear weapons, the Times reported.

Bolton was assistant secretary of state for international organizations from 1989 to 1993 and assisted former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in his role as UN envoy to Western Sahara from 1997 to 2001.

To contact the reporter of this story: Bill Varner at the United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 7, 2005 14:28 EST