US:The White House has agreed to allow a top adviser and other aides to talk to Congress about their role in the firing of eight US attorneys, but President George Bush has expressed full confidence in attorney general Alberto Gonzales.
Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and other officials have agreed to discuss a limited number of issues but they will not testify under oath and the White House says there should be no published transcript of their interviews.
The move came as the Senate voted overwhelmingly to end the White House's authority to unilaterally replace US attorneys, who are the highest federal law enforcement officers in their districts.
By 94 votes to two, the Senate cancelled a provision in the anti-terrorism Patriot Act that had allowed the attorney general to appoint US attorneys without Senate confirmation. Democrats say the administration abused that authority when it fired the eight prosecutors and proposed replacing some of them with Republican loyalists.
"If you politicise the prosecutors, you politicise everybody in the whole chain of law enforcement," said Senate judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy.
In a letter to Congress, White House counsel Fred Fielding said that more than 3,000 documents released by the justice department "do not reflect that any US attorney was replaced to interfere with a pending or future criminal investigation or for any other improper reason".
New York Democratic senator Charles Schumer said Mr Fielding's offer of limited interviews with administration officials did not go far enough. "It's sort of giving us the opportunity to talk to them but not giving us the opportunity to figure out what really happened here," he said.
With Democrats calling for Mr Gonzales's resignation, the president yesterday phoned the attorney general to assure him of his support. "They had a good conversation about the status of the US attorney issue. The president also reaffirmed his strong backing and support for the attorney general," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
The administration initially claimed the White House played no role in the firing of the attorneys, insisting the sackings were over managerial and administrative issues. E-mails released to Congress last week showed, however, that senior White House officials had discussed the firings and were aware of them in advance.