The new US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to send more, better qualified staff to the biggest US embassy worldwide, a US spokesman said Tuesday.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed Crocker's request made in a May 31 cable.
The Washington Post reported that the envoy bluntly told Rice that the mission lacks enough well-qualified employees.
"He just said he wants some more (people)," McCormack told reporters. "He is going to get them."
"The secretary has put the State Department on a war footing with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.
"When she gets a cable from her current ambassador newly arrived that says 'I need certain things,' you can bet that if those requests are reasonable, and are going to make his ability to execute the mission more effectively ... then she is going to get it for him," McCormack added.
The Baghdad embassy has a budget of more than one billion dollars for this year and its staff has expanded to more than 1,000 Americans and 4,000 third-country nationals, according to the Post.
But Crocker, in his cable, said he is short on well-qualified staff members and that the embassy's security rules are too restrictive for US Foreign Service officers to do their jobs, according to the daily.
"Simply put, we cannot do the nation's most important work if we do not have the Department's best people," Crocker said in the memo.
"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."
