Three senior State Department officials told NBC News that there a number of meetings with foreign delegations at this week’s UNGA that Tillerson either ignored or refused to attend, forcing either Vice President Mike Pence or U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley to step in.

Haley and Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, spearheaded a briefing for journalists at the White House on Friday instead of Tillerson, and it was McMaster who was by Trump’s side at his UN meetings on Monday…

To date, five of the six under secretary of state positions remain unfilled and the sixth is held by an Obama-era holdover. Ambassador posts in critical locations like Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Cairo, Egypt, Berlin, Germany, Doha, Qatar, Kabul, Afghanistan, and Seoul, South Korea, also remain vacant.