| John Danforth, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, resigned today after less than six months on the job, said a State Department official who asked not to be identified. The official cited a Nov. 22 letter by Danforth in which he expressed the desire to leave at the end of President George W. Bush's first term to spend more time with his family. Danforth, 68, succeeded John Negroponte, now the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and was confirmed by the Senate on June 25. Danforth served previously as Bush's special envoy to the oil-producing African nation of Sudan and was part of a meeting this month of the UN Security Council in Nairobi, Kenya, to arrange a peace accord for Sudan. Danforth earlier served as a Republican U.S. senator from Missouri, from 1976 to 1995. His resignation comes as the UN falls under investigation over its role in the Iraqi oil-for-food program, in which the U.S. says ex-dictator Saddam Hussein looted more than $21 billion. Bush called today for a ``full and fair and open accounting'' of the program. |