The US State Department will send a team to Iraq next week to evaluate security measures for US diplomats after a deadly shooting involving Blackwater USA, spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday.
The team is tasked with reviewing how US officials use security contractors in Iraq and will be headed a senior State Department official, McCormack said.
An interim report is scheduled to be sent to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on October 5 who has said: "My instructions to the panel are simple: their review should be serious, probing and comprehensive.
"Once they have established the baseline facts, I look forward to hearing their recommendations on how to protect our people while furthering our foreign policy objectives."
The evaluation was sparked by a September 16 shoot-out in which at least 10 Iraqi civilians were killed by Blackwater guards protecting a State Department convoy.
Blackwater, the biggest private security firm operating in Iraq, said its guards fired in response to a car bomb, but a senior police officer said the shooting was unprovoked.
Furious over the September 16 killings, the Iraqi government threatened to try the Blackwater guards under Iraqi law and is preparing legislation to bring supervision of private contractors under its control.
Washington has launched two separate probes into the actions, one ordered by Rice and the other Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Gates earlier sent a five-person team to Iraq to meet with top US commanders and study the matter more deeply.
