The US president, George Bush, today bypassed the senate and installed the controversial neo-conservative John Bolton as ambassador to the UN.
Mr Bush took advantage of his power to fill vacancies without senate approval while Congress is in recess. Under the constitution, Mr Bolton's recess appointment during the senators' August break will last until the next session of Congress, which begins in January 2007.
"He will provide clear US leadership for reform," Mr Bush said. "He will insist on results. He believes in the goals of the UN, in peace and human rights."
Mr Bush said Mr Bolton would bring two decades of "expertise and wisdom" to the role. He said Mr Bolton, in his current role as undersecretary of state for arms control, had shown "leadership preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction".
Mr Bolton told a press conference he was "profoundly honoured and humbled" by the appointment.
"I am prepared to work tirelessly to carry out the agenda of the UN," he said. "I seek a stronger and more effective organisation."
When Mr Bolton's nomination was announced in March, critics said it signalled Mr Bush's desire to destroy the scandal-ridden UN. Mr Bolton once said it would not make much difference to its operation if 10 floors of the UN's 38-storey New York headquarters were removed.
Since then, some analysts have suggested Mr Bolton, 56, could prove to be an unlikely ally of the UN secretary general Kofi Annan's reform plan, which calls for the replacement of the UN's often criticised human rights commission, whose members include representatives of the worst torturers, and an agreed definition of terrorism that denies any exemption for "freedom fighters".
However, Democrats said Mr Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control, would start his new job on the wrong foot in a recess appointment.
"He's damaged goods," Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, a senior Democrat on the senate foreign relations committee, told Fox News. "This is a person who lacks credibility."
Mr Bolton's appointment ends a five-month impasse between the administration and Senate Democrats. The battle grabbed headlines in April amid accusations that Mr Bolton abused subordinates and twisted intelligence to shape his conservative ideology.
In recent weeks, the controversy faded into the background as the senate prepared to begin a nomination battle over John Roberts, the federal appeals judge whom Mr Bush chose to replace the retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at the supreme court. Mr Bush's determination to force Mr Bolton's appointment may make Democrats less willing to support his supreme court nomination.
At Mr Bolton's April confirmation hearing, Democrats raised additional questions about his demeanour and attitude toward lower-level government officials. Those questions came to dominate Mr Bolton's confirmation battle, growing into numerous allegations that he had abused underlings or tried to browbeat intelligence analysts whose views differed from his own.
Despite lengthy investigations, it was never clear that Mr Bolton had done anything improper. Witnesses told the committee that Mr Bolton lost his temper and otherwise threw his weight around and had tried to engineer the ousting of at least two intelligence analysts with whom he had disagreements. But Democrats were never able to establish that his actions crossed the line into out-and-out harassment or improper intimidation.
Republicans appearing on yesterday's news shows said Mr Bolton was the right person to represent the US at the world body.