Washington, 31 July 1997 (RFE/RL) - The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved more than a dozen new ambassadorial appointments, including envoys to Russia, Belarus, Lithuania and Bosnia.
A congressional aide said the committee's recommendations now will be sent to the full Senate for a vote by all 100 members, as the final step for approval. The aide said the vote could come this week before the Senate adjourns for the August recess but it has not yet been scheduled on the Senate agenda.
The Foreign Relations Committee yesterday approved the following nominations:
James Collins to be ambassador to Russia.
Richard Kauzlarich to Bosnia.
Anne Sigmund to Kyrgyzstan.
Keith Smith to Lithuania.
Daniel Speckhard to Belarus.
The Committee also approved the following:
James Pardew for the position of Special Representative for Military Stabilization in the Balkans.
Stephen Sestanovich to be Special Adviser to the Secretary of State on the former Soviet Republics.
Marc Grossman to be Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs.
The nomination of his predecessor, John Kornblum, was approved today for U.S. ambassador to Germany.
And the State Department is to have a new chief spokesman -- James Rubin, a longtime associate of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who was also her spokesman when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Current State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns is expected to become the next U.S.ambassador to Greece.