U.S. Officials Under Investigation Over $730M Cost Of Iraq Embassy

US officials under investigation over $730m cost of Iraq embassy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2212566,00.html

Ewen MacAskill, Washington
Saturday November 17, 2007
The Guardian

The US justice department is investigating the soaring bill for building a huge new American embassy in Baghdad. Postponing its scheduled opening last month, the state department said it didn't "have an answer" as to when it would be finished.

The budget for what is the biggest US embassy building in the world was $592m (£288m) but has jumped to $736m; its opening has been repeatedly postponed due to substandard work or design changes, while the contractor, based in Kuwait, has faced a series of problems.

In a report for a congressional hearing this week the justice department disclosed it was investigating two unnamed state department officials, a "person of interest" and a "subject of investigation".

The building is a signal of US intentions to stay in Iraq. Inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, it is hidden behind blast walls, with 27 buildings housing 615 people.

The state department had been struggling to fill 50 of these diplomatic posts, with many officials unwilling to serve due to the danger. The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, threatened to order diplomats to go, for the first time since Vietnam. But the state department said yesterday: "It appears we are getting very nearly to where we will have volunteers for all of the open, identified jobs. We have candidates identified for all the jobs."