NGOs Urge Bush to Withdraw Sauerbrey Nomination

Read the Inter Press Service News Agency report from October 17, 2005.

"A coalition of 10 women's health and rights groups Tuesday urged Bush to withdraw the nomination of Amb. Ellen Sauerbrey as Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), calling it 'yet another in a long string of crony nominations of unqualified individuals for critical positions'.

"The groups' statement followed editorials denouncing Sauerbrey's appointment by two of the country's most important newspapers, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, which called her unqualified and too ideological, as well as criticism by prominent emergency relief groups.

"'This is a job that deals with one of the great moral issues of our time,' Joel R. Charney, vice president for policy at Refugees International, told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month. 'This is not a position where you drop in a political hack.'

"Sauerbrey, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Maryland twice during the 1990s, has served in relatively low-profile State Department positions since Bush took office in 2001, most recently as U.S. representative to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the U.N.'s Commission on the Status of Women."