Paul Coverdell: “we had a very unfortunate story appear in the Washington Post this morning by Helen Dewar. The first paragraph…”

“we had a very unfortunate story appear in the Washington Post this morning by Helen Dewar. The first paragraph: President Clinton had ``some choice words'' about the pace of Senate action on administration nominations during a Wednesday night meeting with Senate Democrats. And then it quotes our distinguished minority leader: Daschle estimated there are 30 ambassadorial nominations awaiting action for countries that, according to a Senate list, include Britain, France, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia and, as of Tuesday, Mexico. This is ill-placed and irresponsible criticism and does not serve the efficient management of these nominations. I read the article while I was conducting a hearing that we had hurried to deal with the nomination of the Ambassadors for Guyana and Paraguay. I have just left a meeting with the potential nominee for Ambassador to France, and I spent the better part of the last month doing everything we might do to get our Ambassador to Canada, which, I might add, has been without an ambassador for over a year and a half. We just received the nomination for that Ambassador on July 2--July 2--of this year. The vacancy began in April 1996--Canada. And there have been extended vacancies in Germany, Moscow, et cetera. To clarify, this year, we have had 56 nominations received by the Foreign Relations Committee; 14 have been confirmed, 9 are pending on the Executive Calendar; 33 are pending in the committee. That sounds like a lot.…”