Washington: US Secretary ofState Condoleezza Rice today told a US Senate committee that the US administration is 'very actively're-deploying diplomats out of posts in Europe to countries like India with aview to correcting some imbalances.

"We are very actively redeploying our diplomats out of posts, forinstance, in Europe, to posts in places like Indiaand places in Latin America, places that,frankly, have been understaffed by American diplomatic personnel.

"At one point, we had as many people in Germanyas we had in India.We are trying to right some of those balances," Rice told the SenateForeign Relations Committee.

"We are restructured we haverestructured our foreign assistance efforts, so that our foreign assistancedollars are going to high-priority tasks and are matched up with the objectivesthat we are trying to achieve. We have put a great effort into restructuringpublic diplomacy" Rice added.

The top Bush administration official came before the Senate Foreign RelationsCommittee to defend her Department's Budget allocations for 2008 along withsupplemental requests for 2007 and 2008, especially for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rice was defending her Fiscal 2008 allocation of a little over a US$ 36billions; Supplementals of about US$ 6 billions for 2007 and US$ 3.3 Billionsfor 2008.

The supplementals part of the President's Budget came under attack by theChairman of the Senate Panel.

 

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