Haley resigns as US ambassador to the United Nations

[WASHINGTON] President Donald Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has resigned, leaving the White House with one fewer moderate Republican voice in his Cabinet as his foreign policy team.

President Trump said on Tuesday he has accepted her resignation and Ms Haley will be leaving at the end of the year.

Ms Haley had discussed her resignation with Mr Trump last week when she visited him at the White House, sources said.

It was not immediately clear why she quit.

Ms Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, had been an early and frequent critic of Mr Trump, so when he named her the envoy to the world body weeks after his election in November 2016, the appointment was seen as an olive branch.

The daughter of immigrants from India, Haley favored free markets and global trade and earned international attention for speaking out against the Confederate battle flag in the aftermath of the 2015 massacre at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. During Mr Trump's presidential campaign, she sharply criticized his demeanor and warned what it might mean for US diplomacy - even suggesting that his tendency to lash out at critics could cause a world war.

In a January 2016 response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, she warned against following "the siren call of the angriest voices," a clear rebuke of Mr Trump.

And in December 2017, Ms Haley said that women who had accused Mr Trump of sexual misconduct "should be heard," a surprising break from the administration's long-standing assertion that the accusations were false and that voters rightly dismissed them when they elected Mr Trump.

"They should be heard, and they should be dealt with," Ms Haley told CBS. "And I think we heard from them prior to the election. And I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up."

She often clashed with her first boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whose aides wanted her to first clear her public remarks with Washington.

NYTimes, REUTERS