WASHINGTON, 27 July 2007 — The US State Department has finally abandoned plans to build a new embassy in Beirut based on security concerns, ABC News reported yesterday. The dispute between the US Embassy in Beirut and the State Department in Washington has been simmering since late last year.
While the State Department official in charge of embassy construction, retired US Army Maj. Gen. Charles Williams recommended the embassy be built, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was urged by Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman to scrap the plan, the network reported. Officials said Williams insisted it be built on land purchased there two years ago for more than $22 million, and that the plan was consistent with the State Department’s “relations with Congress and our global building objectives,” according to the report.
While serving in Lebanon, Feltman reportedly informed Secretary Rice of his objections to the proposed location, saying his staff “unanimously opposes construction” of the embassy in a May 31, 2007 cable message, according to the report.
Feltman also said in the cable that his local staff would be “an easy target” for Hezbollah and that US diplomats would “be under siege” during any conflict.
The proposed embassy site is located in the Baabda area of Beirut which is controlled by the anti-US radical group rather than the Lebanese government, said the report.
The designated area is located less than a quarter of a mile from the scene of intense combat last summer between Hezbollah and Israeli forces. Officials say Hezbollah, not the government of Lebanon, could sever access to the area at will.
Former State Department security official Tony Diebler told ABC “it boggles the mind” the site would be recommended.
“Any reasonable person that looks at that site, does their homework and sees who controls the area would determine that it’s a foolish, dangerous idea to build the embassy there,” he said.
Hezbollah is believed to be behind two attacks on the US Embassy and an embassy annex in 1983 and 1984 that led to the deaths of 87 people, including eight CIA employees. At one point, the US Embassy refused to allow a State Department official from Washington, James Golden, managing director of the Emergency Projects Coordinating Office, permission to enter the country for the embassy project by denying normally standard “country clearance.”
Not to be outdone, the new US ambassador in Iraq has also jumped into the fray, saying the embassy in Baghdad does not have enough well-qualified staff and has asked the State Department for its “best people,” The Washington Post reported. “Simply put, we cannot do the nation’s most important work if we do not have the department’s best people,” Ambassador Ryan Crocker said in a bluntly written memo last month to Secretary of State Rice. “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.”
The US 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, the Post said.
Crocker confirmed the authenticity of the unclassified cable and it said it was not intended as criticism of Rice or of the staff, the Post said.
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.
