The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River in Baghdad will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water. Original cost estimates range over $1 billion.
The new U.S. Embassy is as cloaked in secrecy as the ministate in Rome, and has been under construction since mid-2005 with a target completion date of June 2007. The embassy complex — 21 buildings on 104 acres, according to a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report — is taking shape just east of a former palace of Saddam Hussein’s and across the road from the building where the ex-dictator is now on trial.
"Embassy Baghdad" will dwarf new U.S. embassies elsewhere, its 104 acres six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York, and two-thirds the acreage of Washington's National Mall.
The 5,500 Americans and Iraqis working at the embassy, almost half listed as security, are far more numerous than at any other U.S. mission worldwide.
[Excerpts of an article by Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press]
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