U.S. Diplomats Riled Over Possible Forced Duty in Iraq

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• RAY SUAREZ:

  American diplomats reluctant to serve in Iraq, Margaret Warner has the story.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Yesterday's contentious meeting at the State Department was unusual in the staid world of professional diplomats. Hundreds of Foreign Service officers crowded into an auditorium to protest a new policy for filling 48 critical jobs in Iraq next year.

  Some 250 diplomats have been told that they are "prime candidates" for one or more of the jobs and that, if they don't volunteer, some of them will be ordered to go. If they refuse the orders, they face disciplinary procedures, including possible dismissal.

  This is the first time since the Vietnam War that the State Department has resorted to such directed assignments, as they're known. About 200 Foreign Service officers work in Iraq at present, in Baghdad and in provincial reconstructions teams around the country. The U.S. embassy there is the largest in the world.

  Three State Department employees, none of them Foreign Service officers, have died in Iraq since the war began.

  And for more on all of this, we talk to two career Foreign Service officers. Ambassador Thomas Krajeski, director of career development and assignments at the State Department, he's a former ambassador to Yemen and served for three months in Iraq in 2003. And John Naland, president of the American Foreign Service Association, which represents Foreign Service personnel, he's served in Mexico, Colombia and Nicaragua.

  And welcome to you both.

  Mr. Naland, this was almost unprecedented to have all these Foreign Service officers stand up and protest like this. What triggered it?

• JOHN NALAND, American Foreign Service Association:

  Iraq triggered it. Iraq really is unprecedented in the Foreign Service. You mentioned Vietnam 40 years ago. Many Foreign Service members served honorably in Vietnam, and some died, but those who served tell me that Saigon was never as dangerous, except during the Tet Offensive, as Baghdad has been and that serving in the provinces of Vietnam was never as dangerous as serving on many of the provisional reconstruction teams are.

  So it's a different animal. And the Foreign Service, the State Department, has been staffing it for the last four years, five years, with volunteers. And we in the American Foreign Service Association would like to see it continue to be volunteers because of the unprecedented situation.