WASHINGTON - A third U.S.
diplomat has resigned partly because of opposition to U.S. policy toward
Iraq, a State Department official said on Thursday.
Mary Wright, deputy chief of mission at the
U.S. Embassy in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, cited U.S. policy toward Iraq, North
Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as reasons for her decision to
step down, said the official, who asked not to be named. The official did
not know when Wright's resignation took effect.
"I strongly believe that going to war now
will make the world more dangerous, not safer," Wright, the senior-most
U.S. diplomat to step down over Iraq, said in a letter to Secretary of
State Colin Powell that quoted by the Washington Post.
The newspaper said Wright also criticized
what she called a "lack of policy on North Korea" and a "lack of effort"
by Washington to try to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Wright followed John H. Brown, a former
cultural attache at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and John Brady Kiesling,
political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, in stepping down this
year because of U.S. policy on Iraq.
The United States began its war against Iraq
on Wednesday by bombing targets on the outskirts of Baghdad and it
attacked key sites in the Iraqi capital with cruise missiles on Thursday
in an effort to end Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's rule.
Copyright 2003
Reuters
Ltd
