JONATHAN GREIG
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| US ambassador William Heidt at a meeting in Prey Veng province last year. US Embassy |
US Ambassador to Cambodia William Heidt can rest easy now that the White House has clarified a New York Times report claiming all ambassadors were asked to resign and leave their posts by January 20 – the day of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Only politically appointed ambassadors are affected by the move, assistant secretary for the US public affairs bureau John Kirby told reporters at a White House press briefing on Friday.
Mr. Kirby was forced to clarify the situation when asked whether career diplomats who were appointed by President Barack Obama – making them by definition “political” – would be forced to resign as well at noon on January 20.
“The ones who were asked this year to submit letters of resignation are political, non-career political appointee ambassadors,” Mr. Kirby said, adding that roughly 30 percent of ambassadors were considered political appointees.
The Times report caused a minor row late last week after claiming the incoming Trump administration forced ambassadors to submit their resignation in December and leave by his first day in office, throwing into disarray a panoply of initiatives, business deals and diplomatic efforts in strategic areas across the world.
It also highlighted the effect the hard deadline would have on the ambassadors themselves as well as their families, particularly children pulled out of school halfway through the school year.
US Ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman was the first to heed Mr. Trump’s call, officially resigning on Friday.
However, Mr. Kirby refuted parts of the Times report during the press briefing, saying this was not in fact a break from tradition.
“All political appointees – and frankly, even careers as ambassadors or military admirals and generals – you serve at the pleasure of the president,” he said.
“When you’re a political appointee for this or any other administration, you have no expectation of staying beyond the inauguration of a new administration. That’s the way it works.
“You’d have to talk to the Trump transition team about why they decided to not be willing to broker exceptions or waivers, requests to extend.
“For career Foreign Service officers, this year there has been no such directive, no such expectation for them to have to submit resignations at the end of the term.”
Jay Raman, the public affairs officer at the US embassy in Phnom Penh, confirmed Mr. Kirby’s statement, telling Khmer Times: “Ambassador Heidt is a career member of the Foreign Service.”
Mr. Heidt was sworn in as ambassador to Cambodia in September 2015 after being nominated by Mr. Obama.
As a career member of the Foreign Service, the directive from the Trump administration seemingly does not apply to Mr. Heidt.
Yet Mr. Kirby did leave the door open for some potential changes to any number of ambassador posts.
“They were not asked to submit letters of resignation like political appointees were, but as I said, look, the incoming administration also gets to make decisions about how they want to staff embassies and posts.
“And to [the reporter’s] point, I mean, even career Foreign Service officers as ambassadors are presidential appointees,” he said.
“And so the incoming administration will have to take a look at it and see if the 70-30 split is what they want or how they want to staff these posts, but I can’t speak for them.”
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