WASHINGTON - The State Department will order as many as 50 U.S. diplomats to take posts in Iraq next year because of expected shortfalls in filling openings there, the first such large-scale forced assignment since the Vietnam War.
On Monday, 200 to 300 announcements will be sent to selected "prime candidates" for 50 open positions, said Harry Thomas, director general of the Foreign Service. Some are expected to respond by volunteering, he said.
If an insufficient number volunteers by Nov. 12, a department panel will determine which ones will be ordered to report to the Baghdad embassy next summer.
"If people say they want to go to Iraq, we will take them," Thomas said in an interview. But "we have to move now because we can't hold up the process."
Those on the list were selected by factors including grade, specialty and language skill, as well as "people who have not had a recent hardship tour," he said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice previewed a possible shortfall in June, when she ordered that positions in Iraq be filled before any other openings at the State Department headquarters in Washington or abroad are available. At the time, Rice said it was her "fervent hope" that sufficient numbers would continue to volunteer.
Her order followed a request by Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Baghdad for an increase in the number and quality of economic and political officers.
Although a few skilled individuals were ordered to "hardto-fill" diplomatic posts in past decades, there have been no mass "directed assignments" in the Foreign Service since 1969, when an entire class of 15 to 20 junior officers was sent to Vietnam, Thomas said.
Those who receive the selection letters will have 10 days to file a written notice of objection.
The review panel will consider the objections, but Thomas made clear that a serious, documented medical condition is likely to be the only valid excuse.
The department has the authority to fire anyone who refuses to accept an assignment.
UNION OBJECTIONS
The union representing U.S. diplomats has officially objected to the Iraq call-up.
"We believe, and we have told the secretary of state, that directing unarmed civilians who are untrained for combat into a war zone should be done on a voluntary basis," said Steve Kashkett, vice president of the American Foreign Service Association. "Directed assignments, we fear, can be detrimental to the individual, to the post and to the Foreign Service as a whole."
Kashkett said the association had contended in meetings with Rice and Thomas that a diplomatic draft is unnecessary and that "thousands" of diplomats have volunteered for Iraq over the past five years. "We're not weenies, we're not cowards, we're not cookie pushers in Europe," he said. "This has never been necessary in a generation."
Thomas also praised the service and noted that more than1,200 of 11,500 State Department personnel have served in what has become the largest U.S. embassy in history. But its sheer size and the truncated, one-year U.S. tours there have strained the service.
The number of diplomatic positions in Iraq has increased every year since the embassy opened in 2004. The expansion of Provincial Reconstruction Teams - made up of diplomats who work with local communities outside of Baghdad - from 10 to 25 last summer as part of President Bush's new strategy added another 30 Foreign Service personnel and many more outside contractors. Volunteers have filled all but about 50 slots that will be empty as of next summer, Thomas said.
AL-SADR'S CEASE-FIRE
In Iraq, meanwhile, an aide to Muqtada al-Sadr said Friday that the radical Shiite cleric could end a ban on his militia's activities because of rising anger over U.S. and Iraqi raids against his followers.
Al-Sadr's call for a six-month cease-fire has been credited with a sharp drop in the number of bullet-riddled bodies that turn up on the streets of Iraq and are believed to be victims of Shiite death squads.
Baghdad police found three people slain execution-style Friday, compared with the dozens often found on a typical day before al-Sadr's declaration. The morgue in the southerncity of Kut received two bodies, including one pulled from the Tigris River.
Another five Iraqis were killed in attacks nationwide, including a woman who was caught up in a suicide attack north of Baghdad while she was walking to the market.
The U.S. military reported that an American soldier was killed and four were wounded in southern Baghdad on Thursday when their unit was hit with an armor-piercing explosive.
The U.S. welcomed al-Sadr's August cease-fire declaration but has continued to target what it says are Iranian-backed breakaway factions of his Mahdi Army militia.
Al-Sadr aide Sheik Assad al-Nasseri said during a sermon in the mosque in Kufa, 100 miles south of Baghdad, that patience with the U.S. operations was running out and the freeze could be lifted anytime.
"It was one decision which could end in one minute, and then they will be sorry," al-Nasseri told worshippers.
Information for this article was contributed by Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post and Sameer N. Yacoub and Bushra Juhi of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 11 on 10/27/2007