Obama's U.N. Pick to Seek Security Council Seat for Israel

President Barack Obama's nominee for U.N. envoy Wednesday slammed the global body's "unacceptable bias" against Israel, and pledged to lobby hard to get America's closest Mideast ally a seat on the Security Council.

Even as detractors criticize her past statements about Israel, genocide expert and human rights champion Samantha Power enjoys bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate, where broad cooperation this week on executive branch nominees was likely to ease her expected confirmation.

Power would replace Susan Rice, who leaves under a cloud for her role in the administration's public explanation for the deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Libya last September 11 that left four Americans dead including the ambassador there.

Obama has appointed Rice as his new national security adviser.

Power, who also faulted the United Nations for failing to stop the slaughter in Syria, said in her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that America enjoys a "special relationship" with Israel, whose "legitimacy should be beyond dispute, and its security must be beyond doubt."

She added: "Within this (U.N.) organization built in the wake of the Holocaust... we also see unacceptable bias and attacks against the state of Israel."

Not only did Power pledge to fight such bias, she said she would "absolutely" commit to seeking a first-time seat for Israel on the 15-member U.N. Security Council in 2018.

Just 42 years old, Power is a former Harvard scholar and foreign policy whiz who has won a Pulitzer Prize for a book on genocide, and was among those who nudged U.S. policy towards ousting Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.

She has earned the backing of Republicans including veteran Senator John McCain, who has described her as capable and qualified.

But Retired Lieutenant General William 'Jerry' Boykin, who is behind a push to block her confirmation, reportedly blasted Power at an event earlier this month at the National Press Club.

"We should be proud to be Americans, and if you look at Samantha Power's track record there is a strong indication that her attitude is just the opposite," he said.

Boykin and other hawkish conservatives have pointed to controversial comments Power made a decade ago that some interpreted as being anti-Israel, in which she recommended the U.S. stop spending on the Jewish state's military and instead invest billions of dollars in Palestinian entities.

In a 2002 interview Power urged the United States send a "mammoth protection force" to create a military presence in Israel, saying the move would alienate the U.S. pro-Israel lobby which she described as "a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import."

Power has since disavowed those comments, but Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Ron Johnson pressed her to explain what she meant when she wrote in 2003 that America needs a "historical reckoning with crimes committed" by the U.S. government.

In a tense exchange, Rubio repeatedly asked what the U.S. crimes were, but Powers merely replied that she would never apologize for America, and that "I believe the United States is the greatest country on Earth.

Rubio on Wednesday introduced legislation aimed at instituting several key U.N. reforms, and would withhold U.S. contributions "to any U.N. entity that grants full membership to the Palestinian Authority" without a negotiated peace settlement with Israel.

In recent months Power has courted Jewish and pro-Israel groups, drawing support from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League.

On Wednesday Power spoke of "the absurdity of Iran chairing the U.N. Conference on Disarmament, despite the fact that its continued pursuit of nuclear weapons is a grave threat to international peace and security."

On Syria, she pointed to "the failure of the U.N. Security Council to respond to the slaughter in Syria -- a disgrace that history will judge harshly."

She also said it was vital to pressure Russia into supporting U.N. positions against Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, who she said "has written a new playbook for brutality... in response to a democratic uprising."