Senate confirms veteran diplomat as US ambassador to Libya

The Senate has confirmed President Barack Obama's choice for U.S. ambassador to Libya -- the country in North Africa where four Americans, including then-Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed in 2012.

Peter William Bodde will become the new ambassador, though the U.S. Embassy in the Tripoli, the Libyan capital, is closed. Diplomatic work is now done out of Tunis, the capital of neighboring Tunisia.

After Stevens and the Americans were killed in the city of Benghazi in September 2012, the U.S. went without an ambassador to Libya until Deborah Jones was appointed in May 2013.

Bodde has been ambassador to Nepal since 2012. Before that, he was an assistant chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

The Senate also confirmed, by voice vote, several other ambassadors:

 --Elisabeth I. Millard, Tajikistan;

 --Marc Jonathan Sievers, Oman;

 --Deborah Malac, Uganda;

 --Lisa Peterson, Swaziland;

 --H. Dean Pittman, Mozambique.