WASHINGTON, Feb 27: A career United States diplomat now serving in Greece has resigned his position in protest over US policy toward Iraq, State Department officials said on Thursday.

The officials said John Kiesling, a political officer at the US embassy in Athens, resigned on Monday, outlining his reasons for doing so in a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell in which he decried Washington’s apparent insistence on going to war with Iraq.

“He has resigned for personal reasons related to our policies on Iraq,” said one senior official familiar with the contents of the letter. “He felt his own principles were being compromised.”

A second official said it was unlikely the State Department would comment on the resignation beyond confirming Kiesling’s departure and re-affirming guarantees of freedom of speech and expression in the US Constitution.

“We are going to take the high road on this one,” the second official said.

The resignation of the 20-year State Department veteran, first reported by the New York Times, is thought to be the first Iraq-related departure from the US diplomatic corps, the officials said.

Kiesling told the Times in a telephone interview from Athens that he had acted alone in resigning but that he had “been comforted” by expressions of support he had received afterwards.

“No one of my colleagues is comfortable with our policy,” the paper quoted Kiesling as saying.

“Everyone is moving ahead with it as good and loyal,” he said. “The State Department is loaded with people who want to play the team game — we have a very strong premium on loyalty.”

The State Department officials declined to comment on Kiesling’s remarks to the Times which quoted liberally from his resignation letter to Powell.

In the letter, Kiesling, who has served previously in the Middle East and the Caucasus, said that Washington’s persistence in moving ahead with a possible war with Iraq was wreaking disastrous consequences on US interests abroad.

“Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offence and defence since the days of Woodrow Wilson,” he wrote, according to the Times.

“We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary,” he said.—AFP