US State Department diplomats have criticized new rules that will force some to work in Iraq against their will or risk dismissal, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

Their complaints were voiced at a meeting of hundreds of diplomats and senior officials to hear Harry Thomas, the department's director of human resources, describe the new policy.

Service in Baghdad was "a potential death sentence," said a man who identified himself as a 46-year Foreign Service veteran, the Post reported.

"Any other embassy in the world would be closed by now," he said to sustained applause, the Post reported, citing an audiotape of the meeting.

Among other senior officials present at the meeting was David Satterfield, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's policy coordinator for Iraq.

Diplomats questioned the size of the embassy in Baghdad, the biggest US mission in the world, and wondered how they could do their jobs properly when they were located deep inside the fortified Green Zone and could travel outside only under heavy guard.

Others criticized what they said was a lack of training before traveling to a war zone, the Post said.

Only 12 percent of officers believe that Rice "is fighting for them," said John Naland, who heads the American Foreign Service Association, the union representing the diplomats, according to the Post.

Diplomats have not been forced to serve abroad against their will since the Vietnam war era.

The State Department announced the new rules on October 26.

The department has not received applications for about 50 of 250 Baghdad jobs to be filled by mid-2008, said Thomas.

AMSI Net- MEO