Monday, February 07, 2005

Let’s cut back on our $1.5bn plan for an Embassy in Iraq: 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. 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 Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Today in Iraq