IRAQ - Many US Diplomats Refuse To Work In Iraq.

While the diplomats and Foreign Service employees of the US State Department have always been expected to staff "hardship" postings, those jobs have not usually required that they wear flak jackets with their pinstriped suits. But in the last five years, The New York Times noted recently, the Foreign Service landscape has shifted. Now, because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the paper said, the White House was calling for more American civilians to head not only to those countries, but also to some of their most hostile regions - including Iraq's volatile Anbar Province - to try to establish democratic institutions and help in reconstruction.

That plan is provoking unease and apprehension at the State Department and at other US agencies. Many US employees have outright refused repeated requests that they go to Iraq, while others have demanded that they be assigned only to Baghdad and not be sent outside Baghdad's more secure Green Zone, which includes the American Embassy and Iraqi government ministries. And while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Feb. 7 maintained that State Department employees were "volunteering in large numbers" for difficult posts, including Iraq, several department employees said those who had signed up tended to be younger, more entry-level types, and not experienced, seasoned diplomats.

The reluctance highlights a problem with the administration's new strategy for Iraq, which calls on US diplomats to take challenges on a scale unmatched anywhere else in the world, when the lack of security on the ground outside the Green Zone makes it one of the last places people, particularly those with families, want to go.

The New York Times quoted Steve Kashkett, vice president of the American Foreign Service Association, the professional organisation which represents State Department employees, as saying "our people continue to show great courage in volunteering for duty in Iraq". But Kashkett added: "there remain legitimate questions about the ability of unarmed civilian diplomats to carry out a reconstruction and democracy-building mission in the middle of an active war zone". The issue flared recently when new Defence Secretary Robert Gates testified at a Senate hearing that he shared the concerns of officers who complained about a request from Ms Rice's office that military personnel temporarily fill more than one-third of 350 new jobs in Iraq for which the State Department is supposed to be responsible.

The New York Times reported on Feb. 7 that senior military officials were upset at the request and told President Bush and Gates that the new Iraq strategy could fail unless more civilian agencies stepped forward quickly to carry out plans for reconstruction and political development. David Satterfield, the State Department's senior adviser for Iraq, told reporters during a teleconference that the Department's request was only for temporary help and for non-State Department positions which would probably be filled by contractors anyway.

Satterfield said: "The skill sets needed for the additional staff are not skill sets in which any foreign service in the world, including our own", are proficient. While State Department employees would provide leadership, he said, most of the staffing required would involve specialists like agricultural technicians.

But many military officials remained angry at the request, saying the military did not necessarily have people with those skill sets, either, and that it would have to go to the already strained National Guard to plug holes to take advantage of their civilian, and not their military, strengths. Admiral Edmund Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military was used to working with State Department officials in Iraq, including Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.

Giambastiani went on to describe a kind of cultural clash, saying: "The problem, not surprising, is we're used to deploying over there. We send out orders, we execute orders, we deploy our military, and guess what happens? They turn up and do their job". He said while it was acceptable for the State Department to ask for the National Guard, with its experts in civilian military affairs, to fill the positions temporarily, "you have to understand why people on the Defence side would come up with this frustration". He added: "We've got to get the mission done, but in the long term, we'd rather use our military personnel to fill the military functions".

Answering lawmakers' questions on Feb. 5, Ms Rice said the department had managed to fill 87% of the positions it needed in Iraq. But that percentage does not readily show the people who are volunteering. A State Department "employee who said he had been asked twice to go to Iraq in the past year and had said no both times, vehemently", on Feb. 7 was quoted as saying: "A number of lower-level people are willing to go, seeing this as a combination money-maker, adventure and career-builder. It's the midlevel people who don't want to go".

Department officials have offered incentives, including combat and danger pay, and have conveyed to employees that a stint in Iraq could lead to a more rapid career rise. They have refused to fill openings in some plusher postings in Europe until Iraqi positions are filled.

The complaints from the Pentagon are part of long-simmering tensions between the Defence and State Departments over who is responsible for what in Iraq. The differences go back to the months before the invasion, when State employees complained that they were being cut out of the post-war planning by a Pentagon bent on doing everything itself. A State Department "employee who is learning Arabic before deploying to the Middle East" was on Feb. 7 quoted as saying: "There's some outrage that the collective capacity of American reconstruction capability was ignored prior to the war. And now we are expected to clean up the mess".