Rice: More blacks needed at State Dept.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says there aren't enough black Americans working at the State Department.

Speaking in Washington Monday at the Conference of the White House Initiative on National Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Rice said she wants to strengthen ties between the State Department and black colleges to place more black Americans in the Foreign Service.

"I have lamented that I can go into a meeting at the Department of State -- and as a matter fact I can go into a whole day of meetings at the Department of State -- and actually rarely see somebody who looks like me. And that is just not acceptable," Rice said.

Rice said she and U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., are "targeting students at schools with large minority populations" for scholarships as Rangel Fellows, "to interest them in foreign affairs when they are young, to give them the training and support to learn languages and to learn about the world, and then to go out into that world to be a part of the great global debate challenge and difficulty, too, that we face in the international system."