Rice makes appeal as US diplomats resist forced duty in Iraq
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday made a worldwide appeal for her diplomats to serve in Iraq following uproar over new rules forcing them to work in the war-torn nation or risk dismissal.
"The secretary is going to send out a cable worldwide to people talking about this decision as well as encouraging people to serve in Iraq," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Rice's cable came after an emotional meeting in Washington late Wednesday between senior State Department officials and hundreds of diplomats on the new policy forcing them to serve in Iraq effective at end-November.
Diplomats have not been forced to serve abroad against their will since the Vietnam war era.
Rice, who was expected in Ankara on Friday for talks with Turkish leaders on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, said before a stopover in Ireland, "It is a difficult issue and some people express some opinions.
"But this is the one highest priority task of the United States and we are going to meet our obligations."
"In a sense, the fact that so many people have volunteered and have served, I think I would hope others would think about their obligations not just to the country but their obligations to those who have already served," she said.
"I am very sorry that the recounting of the comments of a few people left the impression that somehow, the Foreign Service does not want to serve in Iraq. It could not be farther from the truth."
Some of the diplomats at the town hall meeting challenged the senior officials in unusually blunt terms over the policy to begin "directed assignments" to fill an anticipated shortfall of 48 diplomats in Iraq.
Jack Crotty, a member of the foreign service for 36 years, was among the most vocal, calling the forced deployment to the US embassy in Baghdad or in so-called provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq a "potential death sentence."
"You know that, in any other embassy in the world, the embassy would be closed at this point," Crotty said to applause by those present.
Three foreign service personnel have been killed in Iraq since the US invasion, State Department officials said.
A bigger round of applause went to foreign service officer Rachael Schneller, who related her bitter experience after she was diagnosed with "post traumatic stress disorder" at the end of a one-year stint in Iraq.
"I have to say that absolutely none of the treatment I received came from the State Department. I asked for treatment from the State Department and I didn't get any of it from the State Department," she said.
But Schneller, choked with emotion, said she had "absolutely no regrets about my service in Iraq," asking the State Department instead to have what she called a "moral imperative."
Other diplomats questioned the size of the embassy in Baghdad, the biggest US mission in the world, and wondered how they could do their jobs properly when they were located deep inside the fortified Green Zone and could travel outside only under heavy guard.
Some criticized what they said was a lack of training before traveling to a war zone.
Rice understood the "full tone and tenor" of the meeting Wednesday and her cable "obviously speaks to some of the concerns that were aired," McCormack said.
President George W. Bush, while expressing his understanding to the concerns of the diplomats, noted their oath to serve the country.
"The president is concerned, but he also has confidence that Secretary Rice will handle this matter in a way that is caring for the people at the foreign service, but also ensures that the mission that the United States is on is supplemented by the foreign service officers who took an oath in order to serve their country," spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.
E-mail letters were sent last Friday to about 200 foreign service officers identified as qualified to fill the 48 new posts in Iraq, saying if enough of them did not volunteer, some would be ordered to serve there.
Some 15 people have volunteered so far for the posts, McCormack said.
But despite the move to force officers to work in Iraq, he said the department had been "quite successful" in filling jobs there with volunteers.
Since the US invasion, he said, more than 1,500 department personnel volunteered for service in Iraq, with the job fill rate at about 94 percent.
"And that's actually a rate considerably higher than worldwide," he said.
Harry Thomas, the State Department's director of human resources who took the brunt of the criticism at Wednesday's meeting, said that every foreign service officer would in future be required to serve one out of three tours in a hardship post.
"Those who have not served in hardship assignments in the past will not be punished, but they all have to realize that there are 'different conditions' now than in the past,'" he said.
