Rice told embassy staff in Baghdad lacking: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department on Tuesday promised to provide the U.S. embassy in Baghdad with all the resources it needs after its new ambassador to Iraq complained he was not getting sufficient qualified staff.

"We're going to get him what he needs. And we're not going to second-guess him when he says: Look, I need X,Y, and Z," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a news briefing.

McCormack made the comments after publication of a cable in which the new envoy, Ryan Crocker, said the embassy in Baghdad does not have enough well-qualified staff and asked the State Department for it's "best people."

The U.S. embassy in Baghdad has become the center of a bureaucratic battle between Crocker, who wants to strengthen the staff, and some members of Congress, who are skeptical about the diplomatic mission's rising costs, according to The Washington Post, which first published the cable.

"Simply put, we cannot do the nation's most important work if we do not have the department's best people," Crocker said in a bluntly written memo last month to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the newspaper reported.

"In essence, the issue is whether we are a department and a service at war," Crocker wrote. "If we are, we need to organize and prioritize in a way that reflects this, something we have not done thus far."

Crocker confirmed the authenticity of the unclassified cable and said it was not intended as criticism of Rice or of the staff, the Post said.

URGENT NATURE OF TASKS

He told the newspaper that the cable reflected the urgent nature of the tasks he has faced since becoming ambassador.

"The big issue for me, in my estimation, was simply not having enough people," Crocker said.

Despite asserting that Crocker would get the resources he needs, McCormack argued that Rice has put the State Department on a "war footing" and taken steps to make sure embassies in Baghdad and Kabul are the top priority.

This includes changing procedures so that "we now fill Embassy Baghdad and Embassy Kabul assignments first. So nobody else gets an assignment until all of those jobs are filled," McCormack said.

He said that since February, 85 percent of the foreign service officers in Iraq had eight or more years of experience, meaning they were mid-level or senior personnel.

In the last six months, "we have cycled through (the embassy) during this period experienced people and people who have excellent language capabilities with Arabic language," McCormack said.

The Post said Crocker's cable also complained about "overly restrictive" security rules imposed on diplomats because of a law passed after the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut.

He asked for authority to operate under less restrictive military standards, as necessary, the Post reported.

Diplomats are "not able to do the job needed," such as meet with officials in cities such as Najaf, under the tight security rules, Crocker told the newspaper.