John Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, said officials involved.

A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt Jose Bustani "had to go," particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.

Bustani, who says he got a "menacing" phone call from Bolton at one point, was removed by a vote of just one-third of member nations at an unusual special session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, at which the United States cited alleged mismanagement in calling for his ouster.

The United Nations’ highest administrative tribunal later condemned the action as an "unacceptable violation" of principles protecting international civil servants. The OPCW session’s Swiss chairman now calls it an "unfortunate precedent" and Bustani a "man with merit."

"Many believed the U.S. delegation didn’t want meddling from outside in the Iraq business," said the retired Swiss diplomat, Heinrich Reimann. "That could be the case."

Bolton’s handling of the multilateral showdown takes on added significance now as he looks for U.S. Senate confirmation as early as this week as U.N. ambassador, a key role on the international stage, and as more details have emerged in Associated Press interviews about what happened in 2002.

A spokeswoman told AP that Bolton, keeping a low profile during his confirmation process, would have no comment for this article.

Bolton has been criticized for supposed bullying of junior U.S. officials and for efforts to get them fired. Bustani, a senior official under the U.N. umbrella, says Bolton used a threatening tone with him and "tried to order me around."

The Iraq connection to the OPCW affair comes as fresh evidence surfaces that the Bush administration was intent from early on to pursue military and not diplomatic action against Saddam Hussein’s regime.

An official British document disclosed last month said Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed in April 2002 to join in an eventual U.S. attack on Iraq. Two weeks later, Bustani was ousted, with British help.

In 1997, the Brazilian arms-control specialist became founding director-general of the OPCW, whose inspectors oversee destruction of U.S., Russian and other chemical weapons under a 168-nation treaty banning such arms.

The agency, based in The Hague, Netherlands, also inspects chemical plants worldwide to ensure they’re not put to military use.

In May 2000, one year ahead of time and with strong U.S. support, Bustani was unanimously re-elected OPCW chief for a 2001-2005 term. Colin Powell, the new secretary of state, praised his leadership qualities in a personal letter in 2001.

But Ralph Earle, a veteran U.S. arms negotiator, told AP that he and others in Bolton’s arms-control bureau grew unhappy with what they considered Bustani’s mismanagement. The agency chief also "had a big ego. He did things on his own," and wasn’t responsive to U.S. and other countries’ positions, said Earle, now retired.

Both Earle and career diplomat Avis Bohlen, who retired in June 2002 as a top Bolton deputy, said the idea to remove Bustani did not originate with the undersecretary. But Bolton "leaped on it enthusiastically," Bohlen recalled.

"He was very much in charge of the whole campaign," she said, and Bustani’s initiative on Iraq seemed the "coup de grace."

"It was that that made Bolton decide he had to go," Bohlen said.

After U.N. arms inspectors had withdrawn from Iraq in 1998 in a dispute with the Baghdad government, Bustani stepped up his initiative, seeking to bring Iraq and other Arab states into the chemical weapons treaty.

Bustani’s inspectors would have found nothing, because Iraq’s chemical weapons were destroyed in the early 1990s. That would have undercut the U.S. rationale for war because the Bush administration by early 2002 was claiming, without hard evidence, that Baghdad still had such an arms program.

In a March 2002 "white paper," Bolton’s office said Bustani was seeking an "inappropriate role" in Iraq, and that the matter should be left to the U.N. Security Council - where Washington has a veto.