Washington — The Obama administration says it is “rightsizing” the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, with the goal of shifting its reliance on contract staff to hiring local Iraqis instead.

“This is what the Iraqis want, and quite frankly, that’s what we want,” Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Thomas Nides said February 8. The change will help the embassy lower operating costs and better “be part of the community,” he said.

The last U.S. military forces pulled out of Iraq in December 2011, but Nides said the United States continues to have a “robust diplomatic presence” in Baghdad, as well as in other parts of the country.

Along with carrying out normal consular duties and political assignments, U.S. diplomatic staff has also helped to establish a police training program for Iraqi law enforcement and is working on economic development in the country, including for Iraq’s oil sector, he said.

“Most of the programs that we’re offering will continue to be offered. But we’ll continue to look at how we can hire like we do in many countries around the world, that we hire Iraqis to help us with the programs that we’re executing,” Nides said.

He said that, as officials consider the future size of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Iraq during the coming year, “my hope is, is that … we can consolidate some of the locations and space, and that will allow us to rely more upon local Iraqi contractors.”

A consolidated U.S. presence would also affect the number of security personnel, he said.

“The number of, quote, ‘security guards’ … is a total derivative of how many square feet we have, right? I mean, how many locations you have, because you have to obviously protect the perimeters of those,” Nides said.