WASHINGTON, April 23: The growing rift between two key members of the Bush administration, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, became public on Wednesday after a major conservative politician publicly demanded revamping of Mr Powell’s office.

Firing the first salvo in this battle, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, said the State Department was bent upon losing the advantages the US military had gained on the ground.

Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank, Mr Gingrich demanded a major overhaul in the State Department, saying that during the Iraqi crisis the department failed miserably to project America’s policies to the rest of the world.

“The last seven months have involved six months of diplomatic failure and one month of military success. The first days after military victory indicate the pattern of diplomatic failure is beginning once again and threatens to undo the effects of military victory,” said Mr Gingrich, who is also a member of the institute.

According to the former speaker, the culture of the State Department represents “process, politeness, and accommodation” as opposed to the president’s approach of “facts, values and outcomes”.

The State Department, he said, undermined the US position at the United Nations by accepting inspections and by agreeing to Hans Blix as the chief UN weapons inspector.

And it was the “ineffective and incoherent” State Department that lost the battle for world public opinion, and despite a “pathetic public campaign of hand wringing and desperation”, it failed to gain a majority on the Security Council for a second resolution, he said.