WASHINGTON, May 7 (UPI) -- More than 1,000 people have volunteered for 142 positions at the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Friday.
"I'm proud to serve with such men and women ... who are braving danger all around the world," said Powell in his key note address on Foreign Affairs Day.
He said the United States has people who, when asked to serve in dangerous places, "step forward, saying, here I am, send me, I will serve."
The United States plans to set up a large embassy in Baghdad by June 30, when it intends to transfer power to an interim Iraqi government.
The embassy may require as many as 4,000 people and will house the U.S. military command and administer an aid program more than three times as large as foreign assistance allocated to the rest of the world.
"We have made great progress in Iraq over the past 15 months, but we all recognize that this is still a country emerging from the shadows of a
barbarous tyranny," said Powell. "Iraq remains an unsettled place as the Iraqi people prepare to resume sovereignty over their own affairs again."
