· Prospect of first forced postings since Vietnam
· Only one-third of positions in Baghdad embassy filled
Ed Pilkington in New York
Saturday November 3, 2007
The Guardian
"The Bush administration took a hard line yesterday on US diplomats resisting postings to Iraq, when secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and the US ambassador in Baghdad issued blunt reminders of their duty to serve anywhere in the world.....
The row flared up on Wednesday at a meeting between state department officials and their managers at which individual employees likened a tour of Iraq to a "potential death sentence". The department's hierarchy countered that only three foreign service personnel had been killed since the invasion of Iraq in 2003......
....On Monday up to 300 were told they were "prime candidates" to fill 48 posts in the new embassy, and that they would be forced to go should any of the positions remain unfilled voluntarily. So far only 15 officials have volunteered......
James Collins, a former US ambassador to Moscow who runs the Russian-Eurasian programme of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, told the Guardian the return to directed assignments, as they are known, was an unfortunate step. "The management of the state department has a big problem if they have to resort to 1960s rules in order to do 21st-century work."...."
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