US State Department to cut positions, rights offices

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump´s top diplomat Marco Rubio on Tuesday unveiled a restructuring of the US State Department that will cut positions and scale back human rights offices, saying the “bloated” organisation was ideologically out of sync with the administration.

Rubio billed the plan as a major shake-up in the State Department, long a bete noire for many US conservatives, although the outline was less drastic than drafts that have circulated -- including one of which would have virtually wiped out day-to-day diplomacy in Africa.

“The Department is bloated, bureaucratic and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great-power competition,” Rubio said in a statement, referring to US rivalry with China.

“The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America´s core national interests.” One key change will be eliminating a division in charge of “civilian security, democracy and human rights.”

It will be replaced by a new office of “coordination for foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs,” which will absorb functions of the US Agency for International Development -- gutted at the start of the Trump administration with the elimination of more than 80 percent of programmes.