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Gonzales rejects calls to resign

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales speaks at a news conference at the Justice Department on Tuesday in Washington to respond to Democratic criticism that the firings of eight federal prosecutors were politically motivated. PHOTO: AFP

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused on Tuesday to resign over accusations that his department sacked eight government prosecutors for political reasons.

Gonzales, already a target of pressure for FBI abuse of privacy rights in its anti-terror investigations, and long criticized for helping the White House justify torture of terror suspects, pinned the blame for the newest Justice Department scandal on his chief of staff, who resigned earlier on Tuesday.

"I acknowledge that mistakes were made. I accept that responsibility," he said at a news conference in Washington.

However, he rejected calls by opposition Democrats to step down for what they condemned as a blatant abuse of power.

"I am here not because I give up; I am here because I've learned from my mistakes, because I accept responsibility and because I'm committed to doing my job," Gonzales said.

But Gonzales, the country's top law enforcement official, said he had not known of the details of the effort by the White House and Justice Department officials to force out US attorneys who were not seen as cooperative by the White House and Republican politicians.

He said his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, took the lead in those efforts, and was in contact with the White House over the process.

"I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussion about what was going on," Gonzales told reporters.

The newest embarrassment at the Department of Justice brought calls from leaders of the opposition Democrats for Gonzales to step down and demands that US President George W. Bush himself come clean about the White House's involvement.

Evidence reported in several newspapers linked the firings to top Bush aides Karl Rove, the president's key political adviser, and then-White House counsel Harriet Miers.

"The president must clarify his role in this whole matter," US Senator Charles Schumer said at a press conference.

"The cloud over the US attorneys, the cloud over the Justice Department, is getting darker and darker, and only the president can dispel it," the senator said.

But the White House rejected the criticisms.

Speaking in Merida, Mexico, where Bush was meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said: "The president has all the confidence in the world in Alberto Gonzales as the attorney general for the United States of America."
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