A diplomatic void was left by the departure last week of the American ambassador to the United Nations, Senator Danforth, after only half a year in the post, and speculation about who might fill it includes a personal friend of the president, a Foggy Bottom favorite, and an unlikely candidate who has called for the removal of the world body’s headquarters from America.

One of the names that has surfaced is that of Governor Pataki, who was rumored to be under consideration during the last ambassadorial search – the one that produced Mr. Danforth in early June. On Saturday, columnist Robert Novak reported that, while no offer has been made, sources close to the governor said Mr. Pataki had been asked whether he would consider serving as envoy to the world body.

That Mr. Pataki would accept an offer for the job seems far from certain. A spokesman for the governor, Andrew Rush, told The New York Sun yesterday: “As the governor has said time and again, he’s focused only on being the governor of New York State and working every day to make the state better.” A source close to the governor said he would be surprised if Mr. Pataki accepted the ambassadorship.

One of New York’s representatives in Washington, Vito Fossella, said he had not heard of Mr. Pataki’s being felt out for an ambassadorial position. But if the governor wanted the job, “I think he’d be terrific for it,” the Staten Island Republican said, “… and the fact that he has an excellent relationship with President Bush doesn’t hurt either.”

Because Mr. Pataki has no official foreign-policy experience, it has been suggested that a post in Turtle Bay would round out his resume and improve his chances at winning the GOP presidential nomination in 2008. Mr. Fossella, however, questioned whether the U.N. position – or any foreign-policy post – would be a prerequisite for a successful Pataki candidacy.

“There weren’t any foreign-policy credentials to President Bush’s name before he ran, and he’s doing a pretty good job,” Mr. Fossella said. “I don’t think there’s a prescribed path to the presidency.”

While Mr. Pataki may have the benefit of being friendly with President Bush, another possible replacement for Mr. Danforth, Richard Williamson – a diplomat, lawyer, and former Republican candidate for the Senate from Illinois – is said to have the State Department unofficially in his corner.

Diplomatic sources at the United Nations told the Sun’s Benny Avni that Mr. Williamson – who, like Mr. Pataki, was said to be under consideration for the ambassadorship the last time around – had emerged on Washington’s rumor mill as a frontrunner for the post. Mr. Williamson’s diplomatic experience is extensive: He was America’s ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna from 1983 to 1985; he was a delegate to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in 1987, 1988, and 1989; he was assistant secretary of state for International Organizations from 1988 to 1989, and during President Bush’s first term he served as alternate representative for special political affairs to the United Nations under Ambassador John Negroponte.

Owing to that background, Mr. Williamson is reportedly preferred by traditional State Department types to a figure like John Bolton – presently undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, and another possible replacement for Mr. Danforth – who is perceived by some at Foggy Bottom as too hawkish to be sent as an emissary to Turtle Bay.

A scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Ledeen, said, however, that Mr. Bolton’s diplomatic style is just what’s needed at the United Nations.

Mr. Ledeen, who has written extensively about the nuclear threat posed by Iran, said of the undersecretary: “I love John Bolton. I think he’d be wonderful. He’s one of the few diplomats who’s had the courage to tell it as it is.” Mr. Ledeen cited Mr. Bolton’s work combatting nuclear proliferation as a qualification for the ambassadorship.

Some Washington insiders also said that, in light of President Bush’s inauguration address, the administration is looking for a U.N. representative who will champion the cause of democratic dissidents in “unfree” countries and possibly coordinate efforts to create a democracy caucus within the United Nations. If the administration is looking to reflect in the choice of a U.N. ambassador the depth of its commitment to spread freedom, one observer, Jed Babbin, said, then Mr. Bolton would be an ideal selection. Mr. Babbin is the author of “Inside the Asylum: Why the U.N. and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think.”

Meanwhile, as foreign-policy insiders in Washington and New York traded the names of experienced diplomats and Republican power brokers, a California-based political action group has put forth a different idea for Mr. Danforth’s replacement: Steve Forbes.

Move America Forward describes itself as “a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization committed to supporting America’s efforts to defeat terrorism and supporting the brave men and women of our Armed Forces.” Part of that mission has included a campaign to “Get the U.N. out of the U.S.,” and the group has identified Mr. Forbes as the man to do it.

A sometime presidential candidate, Mr. Forbes – who also lists the editorship of Forbes magazine and membership on the Committee on the Present Danger among his numerous activities – emerged as a promising ambassadorial candidate following his column in the January 10 issue of his magazine. In the column, Mr. Forbes argued that Manhattan was no longer an appropriate home for the United Nations, which, in his view, has become rank with corruption and turned a blind eye to the world crises it is supposed to help eliminate. “Repotting it might not enable the U.N. to regain its moral bearings,” he wrote, “but it’s certainly worth a try.”

That, says Move America Forward, is exactly the attitude needed in America’s U.N. ambassador. The group’s vice chairwoman, Melanie Morgan, told the Sun last week that her group has gathered 78,000 signatures on a petition aimed at booting the world body, and it has launched a series of television ads across the country, including in New York, to drum up support for the initiative. It has also contacted everyone on its email list, which Ms. Morgan said numbers in the hundreds of thousands, asking supporters to write Mr. Bush to encourage Mr. Forbes’s nomination.

Ms. Morgan, who is co-host of a radio talk show in the San Francisco area, praised Mr. Forbes’s long-demonstrated commitment to the idea that economic freedom begets, and is a prerequisite for, political freedom, and said it was a compelling reason for making him America’s ambassador to the United Nations.

A former member of Congress from Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey, who is now president of the Club for Growth, agreed. The United Nations should place the promotion of economic freedom high on its agenda, Mr. Toomey said. “Free markets are a necessary precondition for any meaningful level of prosperity and well-being, and I think the U.N. really has not done a good job of promoting that,” Mr. Toomey said, adding that Mr. Forbes would make “a terrific ambassador.”

The executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative at the American Enterprise Institute, Radek Sikorski, likewise lauded the idea of a Forbes ambassadorship – owing especially to Mr. Forbes’s chairmanship of Radio Free Europe, “particularly in light of the need to wage a war of ideas in … the war against terrorists and tyrants today – plenty of which are still at the U.N.”

Despite the enthusiasm from Mr. Sikorski and others, the idea of Steve Forbes as America’s face to the United Nations rankled some in other quarters.

“Steven Forbes is a sort of insular, parochial ultraconservative who doesn’t even listen to people in America, let alone foreigners,” Ian Williams, U.N. correspondent for the liberal Nation magazine and author of “The U.N. for Beginners,” said.

A Forbes ambassadorship, however, was not completely without appeal for Mr. Williams. “From a perverse point of view,” he said, “it would make me very happy because it would mean the Bush administration would get zero cooperation from anybody at the U.N.”

It appears, though, that Mr. Williams’s schadenfreude will not come to pass. In response to an inquiry from the Sun about the U.N. job, Mr. Forbes said in a telephone interview: “I’m honored and flattered, but 1) I don’t think it’ll be offered, and 2) I have no real interest in it.”

“My real interest,” he said, “is in getting the U.N. out of the U.S. … but obviously my efforts right now are focused even more on the Social Security- and tax-reform debate.”