Career diplomat John Negroponte has been nominated by President Bush to be US Ambassador
to Iraq. Now that the US has admitted that it would turn over only “limited sovereignty” to Iraq
on June 30, Negroponte would essentially be the principle decision maker in Iraq, supported by
over 100,000 US troops. He would also head the largest US embassy in the world, the center
piece of US dominance of the Middle East. The illegal occupation of Iraq will be infinitely worse
with Negroponte as ambassador, as his record reveals.

BACKGROUND
Negroponte was political officer at the US Embassy in Vietnam from 1964-1968, the height of the
war, and during a period of extrajudicial executions and gross human  rights abuses, including
massacres by the infamous "Tiger Force" of the Army's 101st Airborne Division.

Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985 during which he oversaw a ten-fold
increase in staff and an embassy that housed one of the largest CIA deployments in all of Latin
America. He lied to Congress about his knowledge of the infamous Battalion 316 death squad,
and managed illegal aid to the Contras fighting the Nicaraguan government in direct contravention
of a Congress’ ban.

Negroponte was ambassador to Mexico 1989-1993 where he shepherded the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to its conclusion.  NAFTA has caused one million Mexican farmers to lose their land and livelihoods and undermined labor and environmental protections in Mexico, the US, and Canada.

Negroponte has served as US ambassador to the United Nations since September 2001 during the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq.  He is guilty of lying to the UN about justifications for the war and successfully pressured Mexico and Chile to fire their UN ambassadors after they clashed with him over the war.

FOR FURTHER BACKGROUND ON NEGROPONTE
just released by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, visit:
www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2004/04.20_Negroponte.htm

SENATE SCHEDULES RUSHED HEARING
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a rushed hearing on the nomination for
Thursday, April 29, 2004.  Negroponte's lack of democratic credentials and his record of support
for, or turning a blind eye to, gross human rights violations, held up his nomination for UN
ambassador in 2001. But, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a quick approval vote on
Sept. 12, 2001, rushing him through during the chaos following the tragedy of the day before.

ACTION
1. We must not allow the Senate to sweep his horrible record under the rug a second time. If one
of your Senators is on the Foreign Relations Committee (see below), call and demand a  thorough
hearing and rejection of Negroponte's nomination.

2. If neither of your Senators are on the committee call both Senators anyway and tell them to
demand that Chairman Lugar and Ranking Member Biden conduct a full hearing and reject the
"worst man for the job."

To find the phone number of your senator: http://senate.gov

SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, 108TH CONGRESS
Chairman: Richard G. Lugar (IN-R) 202-224-4814
Ranking Member: Joseph R. Biden (DE-D) 202-224-5042
Chuck Hagel (NE, R) 202-224-4224
Paul S. Sarbanes (MD-D) 202-224-4524
Lincoln Chafee (RI-R) 202-224-2921
Christopher J. Dodd (CT-D) 202-224-2823
George Allen (VA-R) 202-224-4024
John F. Kerry (MA-D) 202-224-2742 Campaign Hdqts: 202-712-3000
Sam Brownback (KS-R) 202-224-6521
Russell D. Feingold (WI-D) 202-224-5323
Michael Enzi (WY-R) 202-224-3424
Barbara Boxer (CA-D)  (202) 224-3553
George V. Voinovich (OH-R) 202-224-3353
Bill Nelson (FL-D) 202-224-3353
Lamar Alexander (TN, R) 202-224-4944
John D. Rockefeller IV (WV-D) 202-224-6472
Norm Coleman (MN-D) 202-224-1152
Jon S. Corzine (NJ-D) 202-224-4744
John Sununu (NH-R) 202-224-2841

ADDITIONAL INFO:  A PERSONAL ACCOUNT

NEW RIPPLES IN AN EVIL STORY
by Sr. Laetitia Bordes, S.H., July 2001
John D. Negroponte, President Bush's nominee as the next ambassador to the United Nations?
My ears perked up. I turned up the volume on the radio. I began listening more attentively. Yes, I
had heard correctly. Bush was nominating Negroponte, the man who gave the CIA backed
Honduran death squads open field when he was ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985.

My mind went back to May 1982 and I saw myself facing Negroponte in his office at the US
Embassy in Tegucigalpa. I had gone to Honduras on a fact-finding delegation. We were looking
for answers. Thirty-two women had fled the death squads of El Salvador after the assassination of
Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 to take refuge in Honduras. One of  them had been Romero's
secretary. Some months after their arrival, these women were forcibly taken from their living
quarters in Tegucigalpa, pushed into a van and disappeared. Our delegation was in Honduras to
find out what had happened to these women.

John Negroponte listened to us as we exposed the facts. There had been eyewitnesses to the
capture and we were well read on the documentation that previous delegations had gathered.
Negroponte denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of these women. He insisted that the US
Embassy did not interfere in the affairs of the Honduran government and it would be to our
advantage to discuss the matter with the latter. Facts, however, reveal quite the contrary. During
Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million; the US
launched a covert war against Nicaragua and mined its harbors, and the US trained Honduran
military to support the Contras.

John Negroponte worked closely with General Alvarez, Chief of the Armed Forces in Honduras,
to enable the training of Honduran soldiers in psychological warfare, sabotage, and many types of
human rights violations, including torture and kidnapping. Honduran and Salvadoran military
were sent to the School of the Americas to receive training in counter-insurgency directed against
people of their own country. The CIA created the infamous Honduran Intelligence Battalion 3-16
that was responsible for the murder of many Sandinistas. General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, a
graduate of the School of the Americas, was a founder and commander of Battalion 3-16. In
1982, the US negotiated access to airfields in Honduras and established a regional military
training center for Central American forces, principally directed at improving fighting forces of the
Salvadoran military.

In 1994, the Honduran Rights Commission outlined the torture and disappearance of at least 184
political opponents.

It also specifically accused John Negroponte of a number of human rights violations. Yet, back in
his office that day in 1982, John Negroponte assured us that he had no idea what had happened to
the women we were looking for. I had to wait 13 years to find out. In an interview with the
Baltimore Sun in1996 Jack Binns, Negroponte's predecessor as US ambassador in Honduras, told
how a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women we had been looking for, were
captured on April 22, 1981 and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, before
being placed in helicopters of the Salvadoran military. After take off from the airport in
Tegucigalpa, the victims were thrown out of the helicopters. Binns told the Baltimore Sun that the
North American authorities were well aware of what had happened and that it was a grave
violation of human rights. But it was seen as part of Ronald Reagan's counterinsurgency policy.

Now in 2001, I'm seeing new ripples in this story.

Since President Bush made it known that he intended to nominate John Negroponte, other people
have suddenly been "disappearing", so to speak. In an article published in the Los Angeles Times
on March 25 Maggie Farley and Norman Kempster reported on the sudden deportation of several
former Honduran death squad members from the United States. These men could have provided
shattering testimony against Negroponte in the forthcoming Senate hearings. One of these recent
deportees just happens to be General Luis Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16. In February,
Washington revoked the visa of Discua who was Deputy Ambassador to the UN. Since then,
Discua has gone public with details of US support of Battalion 3-16.

Given the history of John Negroponte in Central America, it is indeed horrifying to think that he
should be chosen to represent our country at the United Nations, an organization founded to
ensure that the human rights of all people receive the highest respect. How many of our Senators,
I wonder, let alone the US public, know who John Negroponte really is?