State Dept. Offers Record Pay in 2 Hot Spots

State Department figures show that 87 percent to 94 percent of its jobs in Iraq are being filled, with the biggest recruiting challenge coming in finding staff for reconstruction assignments because, in the words of one official involved in Iraq policy, "they're in the most dangerous positions, they're the ones out in the field."

Of 632 overseas locations with U.S. government employees, 353 qualify for some kind of hardship differential, ranging from 5 percent up. The previous limit of 25 percent had been set in 1948, according to State's Office of Allowances.

In setting the hardship differentials, the State Department uses a scoring system that assigns specific weights to such factors as sanitation and disease (20 percent), housing (11 percent), political violence (11 percent), climate (10 percent), political harassment (9 percent), medical and hospital (9 percent) and physical isolation (8 percent).

The danger-pay allowance is based on a separate calculation that includes such factors as the existence of local conflicts, the involvement of U.S. combat troops and the record of U.S. civilian deaths in a particular country. Rates start at 15 percent. The previous maximum of 25 percent had been set in 1981, when the allowance was introduced.

About 25 countries now qualify for danger pay. Iraq and Afghanistan were the first to jump to 35 percent when the new rates were issued during the first week of March. Karachi, Pakistan, was added to the top-danger category on March 17.

Sometimes different places within the same country can receive different rates. For instance, although most of Afghanistan qualifies for the 35 percent danger allowance, an assignment in Kabul, considered slightly safer, gets 30 percent.

The State Department estimates that the additional cost of the higher hardship pay for its employees in Iraq will exceed $2 million a year. It expects to cover that expense through a supplemental appropriation request.

The rise in hardship pay for other foreign posts will be financed largely by eliminating 14 of 27 places that had been receiving hardship allowances of 5 percent, among them Athens, Warsaw, Hong Kong and Seoul. This move will free up an estimated $2.6 million a year, officials said. But the American Foreign Service Association has objected to it. "We think the department ought to be able to find the additional money without taking it out of the hide of others," Holmes said.

The association also has advocated allowing foreign service officers who leave Washington for an overseas post to keep the 17.5 percent cost-of-living differential that comes with duty here.