Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
Senators Lindsey Graham, left, and John McCain arrive on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with Susan Rice, the ambassador to the U.N.
WASHINGTON — Susan E. Rice may have hoped that paying a conciliatory call on three hostile Senate Republicans on Tuesday would smooth over a festering dispute about the deadly attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, and clear a roadblock to her nomination as secretary of state.
But the senators seemed anything but mollified, signaling instead that they would still oppose Ms. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, if she is nominated by President Obama, even after she conceded errors in the account of the assault she gave on Sunday morning television programs shortly after it occurred in September.
Two of the Republicans, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, said they would seek to block Ms. Rice, who according to administration officials remains Mr. Obama's preferred choice to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The third Republican, Senator John McCain of Arizona, said on Fox that he would be "very hard-pressed" to support Ms. Rice.
"Bottom line, I'm more disturbed than I was before," Mr. Graham said after the tense, closed-door meeting.
The continued criticism of Ms. Rice, 48, a diplomat with close ties to Mr. Obama, deepens an already bitter and unusually personal feud between the White House and Republicans over Libya. Responding to a question about criticism of Ms. Rice at a news conference two weeks ago, Mr. Obama said, "If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me."
It also raises the prospect of a confirmation battle if the president goes ahead with nominating Ms. Rice. To some extent, that battle is already under way, even before he has submitted her name. Ms. Rice's visits to senators, which will continue Wednesday, bear all the hallmarks of a presidential nominee seeking to win over reluctant lawmakers.
A senior administration official said the harsh reaction to Ms. Rice's appearance on Tuesday would have no effect on her chances for secretary of state. "They've been saying the same thing for months," he said.
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is the other leading candidate for the post. Several senators, including Mr. McCain, said they would prefer Mr. Kerry and predicted that he would sail through a confirmation hearing.
In a statement after the meeting, Ms. Rice said she incorrectly described the attack in Benghazi, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, as a spontaneous protest gone awry rather than a premeditated terrorist attack. But she said she based her remarks on the intelligence then available — intelligence that changed over time.
"Neither I nor anyone else in the administration intended to mislead the American people at any stage in the process," said Ms. Rice, who was accompanied at the 10 a.m. meeting by the acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael J. Morell.
But Mr. Morell reinforced the perception of an administration that cannot get its story straight by asserting during the meeting that the F.B.I. had modified Ms. Rice's talking points by removing a specific reference to Al Qaeda. At 4 p.m., the senators said in a statement, the C.I.A. called to notify them that Mr. Morell had erred, and that the agency had made the change, not the bureau.
"We are disturbed by the administration's continued inability to answer even the most basic questions about the Benghazi attack and the administration's response," the senators said.
Ms. Rice had requested the meeting amid signs that Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham were softening their criticism. "She deserves the ability and the opportunity to explain herself," Mr. McCain said Sunday.
It is difficult to gauge whether the opposition of the three Republicans, however vociferous, would be enough to derail Ms. Rice's chances for the secretary of state post. Assuming the White House had the support of every Senate Democrat, it would have to win over only five Republicans to gain a filibuster-proof majority.
At a minimum, though, Ms. Rice would face harsh scrutiny. Other Republicans on Tuesday continued voicing suspicions that the White House shaded its initial accounts of the attack in Benghazi, during a hard-fought election, to preserve Mr. Obama's counterterrorism credentials.
Some Republicans condemned Ms. Rice not so much for her handling of the Benghazi affair but for what they said was her blind loyalty to the president. "While I think she'd be outstanding as head of the Democratic National Committee," said Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who will meet with her on Wednesday, "I've just never seen that sense of independence from her, and I think that's one of the reasons she got herself into so much trouble."
Jennifer Steinhauer and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
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