WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President Barack Obama's nominee as his ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, won approval Wednesday from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a panel spokesman said.
The move set the stage for the full Senate to vote on the nomination of Rice, who would become the first African-American woman to hold the job and would enjoy cabinet rank, meaning she would report directly to Obama.
No date for such a vote has been set.
Rice, who was a top foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign after serving as an assistant secretary of state under president Bill Clinton in the 1990s, has recognized the UN "often frustrates Americans, and I am acutely aware of its shortcomings."
But effective global diplomacy and UN support is needed now more than ever in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, she has said, vowing to maintain pressure on Congress to pay off mounting US arrears in UN budget dues.
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