U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
July 29, 2005

BEGINNING TO TRANSFORM THE STATE DEPARTMENT
TO MEET THE CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

FACT SHEET

Today's Action:

* Today, Secretary Rice announced her intention to reorganize
the State Department's Arms Control and International Security bureaus to
better address the modern threat from weapons of mass destruction.

* The Secretary also announced intended changes to refocus the
Department on the President's mission to promote democracy.

Arms Control, International Security and the Changing Threat
The existing structure of the Department's international security bureaus
reflects another time, a time when our nation concentrated on negotiating
strategic arms control agreements, often over the course of many years, and
focused almost exclusively on the Soviet Union as the greatest threat to our
security. At that time, the U.S. and our allies faced an enemy that
possessed thousands of nuclear weapons and a large and powerful conventional
threat that divided Europe between democratic and authoritarian countries.
Today, as President Bush has said, the threat to our nation has changed.
Instead of a single predictable adversary to deter, we face shadowy
non-state networks, such as the A.Q. Khan network, that could seek to help
terrorist organizations and rogue states acquire weapons of mass
destruction.

The reorganization of the International Security and Arms Control bureaus
will focus the Department's national security efforts on combating weapons
of mass destruction through both effective counter and nonproliferation
efforts. We must change the focus of our diplomacy by concentrating the
efforts of the many professionals in these bureaus on preventing the spread
of WMD and missile capabilities and on protecting against WMD threats from
hostile states and terrorists. Some of the most important changes include:

* Creation of the Bureau for International Security and
Nonproliferation. The merger of the Arms Control (AC) and Nonproliferation
(NP) bureaus into a new bureau to be called the Bureau for International
Security and Nonproliferation (ISN). This bureau will take the lead in
counter and nonproliferation initiatives and negotiations. It also will
feature a new office to focus on the nexus between WMD and terrorism, the
preeminent threat we face as a nation. It will be the principal focal point
in the Department for promoting the President's agenda, including the
Proliferation Security Initiative, the Global Partnership Against Weapons
and Materials of Mass Destruction, UN Security Council Resolution 1540, and
efforts to strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime including: IAEA,
Additional Protocol, enrichment of uranium, reprocessing of plutonium, and
nonproliferation assistance as envisioned in the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative
Threat Reduction Initiative Program.

* Verification, Compliance, and Implementation Bureau. The
mandate of the Department's Verification and Compliance Bureau will be
expanded and it will be renamed the Verification, Compliance, and
Implementation Bureau. This bureau will assume responsibility for the
implementation and verification of important treaties that protect American
security, such as the START, INF, Open Skies, and other arms control
treaties.

* Strengthening the Political-Military Affairs Bureau. We
will add additional personnel freed up by the AC-NP merger to the
Political-Military Affairs Bureau (PM) to employ against urgent security
issues such as MANPADS and defense trade controls.

Institutionalizing Democracy Promotion
The United States supports the growth of democratic movements and
institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending
tyranny in our world. Functioning representative governments with the rule
of law, economic opportunity and other tenets of a free society do not make
fertile recruiting grounds for terrorists, do not produce massive outflows
of refugees, do not cause famine, and do not war with other democracies.
Advancing freedom requires comprehensive and tailored strategies to ensure
that we are analyzing each unique situation, learning from successful-and
unsuccessful-transitions to democracy, and using all of the tools at our
disposal to address the many facets of democratization.

The Department is taking a range of steps to institutionalize its democracy
promotion efforts at a high level, through the launching of several
initiatives, which will result in the strengthening of the Department's
assets from within. Some changes include:

* Rename the Under Secretary for Global Affairs, the Under
Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs. This name change underscores
the importance the Secretary places in advancing the President's Freedom
Agenda.

* Launch a comprehensive review of the United States'
democracy promotion strategies and the associated funding with the goal of
enhancing and intensifying our activities in this area.

* Create a new Deputy Assistant Secretary for Democracy. The
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor will get a new Deputy Assistant
Secretary to streamline and centralize our democracy promotion efforts.

* Create a new Advisory Committee for the Secretary to get the
best expert advice on democracy promotion. Often, NGOs, Civil Society and
experts outside the government from academia and other areas have
invaluable, on the ground experience that we need to tap into.

* Transfer reporting responsibilities of the Bureau of
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement to the Under Secretary for
Political Affairs. This transfer will forge a closer link between INL and
regional bureaus, while allowing the Under Secretary for Democracy and
Global Affairs to focus more intensively on her expanded democracy promotion
responsibilities. The Under Secretary's responsibilities for programs
related to democracy and human rights, including the Office to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons and the Human Smuggling and Trafficking
Center, will remain unchanged.

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