Policy Shifts Felt After Bolton's Departure From State Dept.

"We weren't the ones who wanted to keep the meeting secret," one European diplomat said. "It was the American side that didn't want him there."

In March, after Bush met with the leaders of France and Germany, Rice announced that the United States would support the European bid to offer Iran incentives such as the right to apply for World Trade Organization membership and to buy badly needed airplane parts in exchange for stopping any weapons program.

"When a draft of the announcement was circulated through the interagency process," one U.S. official said, "Bolton's office wasn't on the list" of people asked to approve the wording.

Bolton's departure also ultimately spelled the end of the administration's campaign against Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA director general leading nuclear inspections in Iran. Administration officials said the effort was primarily driven by Bolton despite significant internal disagreement about investing time and energy in the effort.

Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Rice's predecessor, Colin L. Powell, told a Senate committee in April that Bolton went "out of his way to bad-mouth" ElBaradei and "to make sure that everybody knew that the maximum power of the United States would be brought to bear against them if he were brought back in."

But the campaign backfired and the administration had to drop the effort this month after gathering no significant support.

The nuclear dispute with Russia attracted less public attention but proved important internally. A program designed to dispose of 68 tons of weapons-grade plutonium stalled in 2003 when agreements expired. The Bush administration would not renew the pacts unless they included stronger language holding Russia accountable for any nuclear accidents in its territory and protecting U.S. contractors building disposal facilities from liability, even in the case of premeditated actions. Russia refused, and the Bolton-led talks went nowhere for two years.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), one of the architects of the plutonium program, grew incensed that such a technical impasse could hold up a program of "global importance." He showed up at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee last year to berate Bolton on the matter.

"I submit that Mr. John Bolton, who has been assigned to negotiate this, has a very heavy responsibility" for the impasse, Domenici said at the hearing. "And I hate to say that I am not sure to this point that he's up to it."

"I raised a lot of hell with him," Domenici recalled last week in an interview. Then when Rice took over, he raised it with her as well. "There's no question she got it from me," Domenici said.

Rice pressed for the issue to be fixed, leading to a new framework that the two sides hope to ratify at the Group of Eight summit in Scotland in July. "I'm pleased," Domenici said, "because I'm finally getting some very positive feedback."