WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants to continue serving President George W. Bush until he leaves the White House, her spokesman said Monday after Bush's top aide Karl Rove resigned.
"The basic question is: Is she planning on sticking around? The answer to that question is, 'yes,'" State Department spokesman Sean Mccormack told reporters.
With Rove's resignation as deputy White House chief of staff announced Monday, Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney are among the last of the remaining top officials with Bush since he first took office in 2001.
Rice became secretary of state in 2005 at the start of Bush's second term in office after being his national security advisor since January 2001.
She had not been spared criticism for her role in prosecuting the unpopular Iraq war, which has taken the lives of 3,684 American soldiers since the March 2003 invasion.
McCormack said that while Rice and other cabinet officials "serve at the pleasure of the president," the top US diplomat has "got a lot on the agenda" for the next 17 months, including grappling with the Iraq war, the Israel-Palestine question as well as the North Korean and Iranian nuclear issues.
"And she has a lot that she wants to accomplish on behalf of this president, on behalf of the American people," he said.
"She looks forward to tackling those issues, and when she's done, heading back to Stanford," Mccormack said, referring to the leading US university where she was provost, the institution's chief budget and academic officer for six years until 1999.
08/13/2007 21:15 GMT