Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice didn't especially want to be introducing Bolton as American's next ambassador to the U.N., some Bush administration officials say, and she had refused to make him her chief deputy despite what even Bolton's friends admit was his intense campaign to win that post last fall.

No surprise, then, that Rice seemed ill at ease last week, her smile dimmer than usual, says one official, at the announcement. "It was utterly inconceivable that this was her initiative," said the official.

Bolton, the administration's chief arms-control official, has made many enemies abroad among America's allies – but also achieved a lot, including President Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative, intended to stop WMD shipments on the high seas, Newsweek reports. His chief ally, Cheney, wanted to award him with a big post, sources say. And there weren't many left.

He failed to get the No. 3 job at Defense left vacant by Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith, and the post of Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser, currently held by Lewis (Scooter) Libby, report Senior Editor Michael Hirsh and Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe in the March 21 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 14).

Rice and her aides now insist that she was only too happy to have him, and that she even suggested Bolton's name to Bush. Intent on avoiding the fate of her predecessor, Colin Powell, Rice knew Bolton would placate the GOP's conservative base as the administration pushes for U.N. reform, this source tells Newsweek.

But he'd also be far from the center of power. "From New York he will have almost no influence on anything that matters," says another senior administration official. But to reaffirm his emphasis in diplomacy, Bush last week decided to make his former close adviser Karen Hughes assistant secretary of State for Public Diplomacy under Rice.

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