Do your duty, Rice tells Iraq revolt diplomats
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and America’s envoy to Baghdad told diplomats it was their duty to serve their country amid a revolt over forced assignments to Iraq.
In separate comments, Rice and ambassador Ryan Crocker said foreign service officers were obligated by their oath of office to work at any diplomatic mission worldwide, regardless of the risks involved or their personal feelings about the policies of any administration.
“We are one foreign service and people need to serve where they are needed,” Rice said aboard her plane as she flew to Turkey for a weekend conference of top officials from Iraq’s neighbours. Crocker is also attending the conference.
Rice noted that more than 1,500 of the 11,500 foreign service officers had already done Iraq duty voluntarily and, while understanding the safety and security concerns of those who might be ordered to go, said they must uphold their commitments.
“I would hope others would think about their obligation not just to the country but their obligation to those who have already served,” said Rice, who sent a worldwide diplomatic cable explaining the situation and appealing for volunteers to fill the 48 vacancies the State Department must fill next year in Iraq.
“Our mission in Iraq is the most essential foreign policy and national security priority for our nation,” Rice wrote in the unclassified cable made public by the US State Department.
“Our success in Iraq and beyond will have lasting consequences for our country and the world.
“Because of your willingness to serve under extraordinarily challenging circumstances, we have until now filled our position in Iraq with volunteers,” she said, adding that her preference was to continue to rely on volunteers.
“However, regardless of how the jobs may be filled, they must be filled,” Rice wrote. “I believe strongly that it is our duty to do our part toward succeeding in the vital mission in Iraq given to us by the president.”
On his way to the meeting in Turkey, Crocker was even blunter, saying diplomats had a responsibility to prioritise the US interest over their personal safety and that those who did not were “in the wrong line of business”.
Joining the foreign service “does not mean you can choose the fight,” he told reporters in Dubai.
“It’s not for us to decide if we like the policy or if the policy is rightly implemented. It’s for us to go and serve, not to debate the policy, not to agree with it.”
Crocker, a 36-year veteran diplomat who has worked throughout the Middle East and was personally sceptical of the Iraq war, has been the US ambassador to Iraq since early this year.
Since his arrival, he has repeatedly asked for more experienced staff to work at the Baghdad embassy and in provincial reconstruction teams.
His requests have been given top priority by Rice and state department chiefs who have offered generous incentives, including extra danger pay, leave time and preference on next assignments to attract diplomats to volunteer for Iraq duty.
But facing a shortfall in volunteers, the department announced last week that it would identify 200 to 300 foreign service officers as “prime candidates” for the 48 unclaimed positions in Iraq and that if not enough of them agreed to go, some would be ordered to do so under threat of dismissal.
The move is the largest diplomatic call-up to an active war zone since Vietnam, and on Wednesday several hundred diplomats angrily complained about the step in a town hall meeting, with many applauding when a colleague likened it to a “potential death sentence”.
Three foreign service personnel – two diplomatic security agents and one political officer – have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
