Posted on 12/06/2007 6:20:42 AM PST by RDTF
Military to Receive Notice of Operations
A new memorandum of understanding on private security contractors in Iraq, agreed to in Baghdad by Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, requires "full coordination" between military and diplomatic officials on the ground but leaves State in control of its own contractors, U.S. officials said.
The agreement, which has not been published, places a military official for the first time in the tactical operations center of the embassy's security office, according to Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte. The military will receive "prior notification" of all diplomatic convoy movements and will give commanders in the field the option of stopping them, he said.
The commanders "are in charge of the battle space," Negroponte said in a recent interview. "If they say don't go there, we won't go there." Although diplomatic movement information was shared with the military in the past, "it was harder to get and it wasn't as well distributed as it is now. We were sending over plans of these movements to the [military] headquarters . . . but it wasn't getting to the different elements" in the field, he said.
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Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates initially called for the contractors, who escort U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials when they travel outside Baghdad's Green Zone or other fortified installations, to be brought under Defense Department control. While resisting that step, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged faulty supervision of the guards from North Carolina-based Blackwater and other companies and ordered increased oversight by the State Department's own Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
Rice and Gates instead decided to negotiate new rules coordinating military and diplomatic security operations in Iraq, resulting in the new understanding.
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(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
ping
Wonder how long before the first diplomats are killed because of Stae Dept interference in security operations.
Not too long, I would suspect.
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