Sapa-AFP | 02 October, 2012 09:03
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. File photo. Image by: RIA NOVOSTI / REUTERS
State Department officials on Monday rejected calls for US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice to resign, amid charges she misled Americans over the assault on a US mission in Libya.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "believes that Ambassador Rice has done a superb job... and we completely reject any such calls here in this building," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
A top Republican lawmaker has called for Rice's resignation after she dismissed suggestions on US TV talk shows that the September 11 assault on the Benghazi consulate, in which the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed, was a terrorist attack.
"I think Susan Rice should resign. She is America's foreign policy spokesman to the world as ambassador to the UN," New York congressman Peter King told National Review Online on Friday.
But Nuland insisted that in the early aftermath of the attack -- in which militants now said to be linked to Al-Qaeda, launched sustained, heavy-arms fire on the US compound and a nearby annex -- US officials had prefaced all remarks with a warning that "these were preliminary assessments."
"The secretary was careful to make clear that these were preliminary assessments, that we would have to fully investigate," Nuland told reporters.
"So thereafter, as you know, the FBI began its investigation, the secretary established the accountability review board, as she's required to do by law.
"They are now beginning their work. So from where we are sitting here, we want to let those two investigations go forward, teach us what we need to learn and then take any necessary steps going forward."
Amid the confused and evolving account put forward by various officials from the US administration since the attack, there are a host of unanswered questions.
They include: What was ambassador Chris Stevens doing in Benghazi? Why was he not evacuated to the annex along with most of the other staff? Were the correct security procedures followed?
His diary, found later by CNN, suggested that Stevens feared he was on an Al-Qaeda hit list. And news of the diary's discovery prompted even more questions about how a reporter was able wander the ruins of the consulate, which had already been declared an FBI crime scene.
Nuland on Monday refused to answer any questions about the current security at the Benghazi consulate, saying the FBI was in charge of the investigation.
"I'm not in a position to confirm at all what the physical situation is in Benghazi," she told reporters.
Meanwhile, five out of six US staff working at the embassy in Tripoli who were evacuated at the weekend have now returned to their post, she said.
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