Intelligence

U.S. Embassy in Baghdad May Be Scaled Down

Yahoo! News - U.S. Embassy in Baghdad May Be Scaled Down

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Plans for the largest U.S. Embassy in the world — a $1 billion compound envisioned for Iraq (news - web sites)'s capital — may be shrinking even before it has been built.

About $660 million for construction of a fortified complex is expected to be included in President Bush (news - web sites)'s request to Congress for some $80 billion the administration says it needs in Iraq and Afghanistan (news - web sites) through September, according to congressional aides from both parties.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because the spending request has yet to be released. It could go to Capitol Hill this week.

The $1 billion figure had arisen in discussions involving the State Department and congressional officials over the past year, but the White House did not submit a request for funds, the aides said.

Last year, when the department was preparing to set up temporary facilities for post-occupation diplomacy, officials said the Baghdad mission would include 700 Iraqi employees and 1,000 Americans. The U.S. contingent would cover employees of the CIA (news - web sites), the Defense Department, the Commerce Department (news - web sites) and about a dozen federal agencies besides the State Department.

No numbers on the size of the permanent mission have been announced.

By comparison, one of the largest U.S. missions is in Moscow, where an embassy spokesman said there are 350 Americans. Assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo are 250 Americans from 20 government agencies, a spokesman there said.

A diplomatic compound being built in Beijing is estimated to cost $275 million. Those constructed in 2003 in Kenya and Tanzania — where terrorists bombed the embassies in 1998 — cost $68 million and $40 million, respectively, officials said at the time.

It was unclear whether the higher expenses in Baghdad would stem from the need for housing inside the compound, the high number of employees or some other cause.

The site is expected to be in the heavily fortified Green Zone, where U.S. government employees live and work. That would put it near where the United States had its embassy before diplomatic relations were broken with Iraq in 1990 over its invasion of Kuwait.

The new compound would not be far from the temporary U.S. mission, a former palace of ousted ruler Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

Though U.S. diplomats toured potential sites as much as a year ago, the administration held off asking for funds as the insurgency grew ever more violent and businesses, aid workers and international agencies reduced their presence in Iraq.

The idea of building a large permanent facility in Iraq has detractors, who say this may not be the time, and Baghdad not the place, for such a project.

"A huge U.S. Embassy does not fit the political mood of Iraq and I think it sends the wrong message," said Frederick Barton, a former official of the U.N. refugee agency and U.S. Agency for International Development who now is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

February 6, 2005 at 03:58 PM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home