Ignoring warnings from Senate colleagues, Sen. Sam Brownback announced Wednesday that he would block quick consideration of the nomination of Christopher Hill, President Obama’s pick to be ambassador to Iraq. Brownback’s move, accompanied by a harsh attack on Hill over human rights concerns, makes confirmation before the spring recess unlikely.

In a floor speech, Brownback, R-Kan., complained of Hill’s “marginalization and utter neglect of human rights” and said the nominee had a “disturbing track record of dishonesty in dealing with Congress.” Brownback was referring to Hill’s tenure as assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2005 to 2009, when he led U.S. negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear programs.

Brownback said that during those talks, “human rights has been subordinated, ignored, cast aside and indeed swept under the carpet in complete contradiction of the law of this country and against our nation’s most basic moral obligations.”

He also said Hill cut deals outside official channels, bypassed intelligence officials and acted on his own authority in meeting alone with the North Koreans — all for little result.

“Broken commitments to Congress, freelancing diplomacy, disregarding human rights, and giving up key leverage to the [North Koreans] in exchange for insubstantial gestures — such things have harmed our national security and ignored our moral obligations, a legacy ill-suited for the next chief of mission in Iraq,” Brownback said.

Though Hill’s supporters appear to have enough votes to overcome Brownback’s objections and confirm the nomination, the Senate does not appear to have time for the procedural maneuvers that would be necessary to do so before the two-week spring recess begins on April 3. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is likely to approve Hill’s nomination March 31, but next week’s Senate schedule is likely to be dominated by consideration of the fiscal 2010 budget resolution.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., said he could not comment on when the Senate would take up the nomination until the committee approved it.

Human Rights Concerns

Brownback’s speech indicated that both carrots and sticks from his colleagues had failed to persuade him to allow the nomination to proceed.

At Hill’s confirmation hearing Wednesday, Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry , D-Mass., and ranking Republican Richard G. Lugar of Indiana strongly warned against delay.

“We are at war,” Lugar said. “This is not a parliamentary struggle among senators who have a diverse point of view.”

Lugar met with Brownback, who is not on the Foreign Relations panel, on March 24. At the hearing, Lugar read off an extensive list of Brownback’s complaints, including that Hill had broken a promise to invite the U.S. special envoy for human rights into the negotiations, and then gave the nominee a chance to rebut the accusations.

Hill said he had promised to include the human rights envoy only in talks that did not deal with nuclear disarmament. Because the North Koreans never completely abandoned their program, the negotiations did not progress beyond that phase, he said, and such discussions never took place.