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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, May 6, 2007

Want to buy an embassy? State Department is selling them

By Matthew Lee
Associated Press

A winning bidder is still being selected for this site in London, where Gen. Dwight Eisenhower planned the World War II invasion of Africa.

AP file photo

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WASHINGTON — Looking for a stately home or opulent office overseas? One in a posh neighborhood or an exotic capital? Maybe with a glorious or infamous past? The U.S. government may have a deal for you.

From Kinshasa to Katmandu, Bangkok to Bogota, U.S. embassies, ambassadorial residences and other diplomatic digs are up for sale as the State Department moves its employees to more secure sites, upgrades facilities and combines operations in multipurpose compounds.

Some 29 properties worth more than $205 million are on the market in 21 countries, including a huge embassy annex in the heart of London, large chancery buildings in Panama, Nicaragua and Nepal, and homes fit for envoys extraordinary in Belize and Venezuela.

The former house of the No. 2 at the embassy in Canada, a home once featured in a Paul Newman film, is also for sale, as is a magnificent manse in the steamy Indonesian capital of Jakarta and a gem with multiple swimming pools and tennis courts in Ivory Coast.

With an asking price of $180 million, the immense former Navy Annex in London's Mayfair district — marketed as suitable for a five-star hotel — is probably beyond most budgets. Ditto for the old U.S. embassy in Nepal, at $6 million described as a "grand colonial estate."

But apartments and single-family houses once occupied by junior embassy officers in Peru and Poland are available, too, to say nothing of commercial and industrial space in Congo, Cameroon, Mali and Thailand.

All have been declared "excess property" and listed for sale with private brokers by the State Department's bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations.

Diplomatic facilities have to meet safety requirements enacted after the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and tightened after 9/11. Those that don't — many of them are too close to major thoroughfares — must be abandoned by U.S. diplomats and most are put up for sale.

In search of a fixer-upper? The former U.S. ambassador's residence in Libya can be yours for a cool $1.5 million, marked down from its multimillion-dollar estimated market value because of damage from anti-American riots and demonstrations throughout the 1980s and '90s.

"Internal renovation is needed," the prospectus says.

Still, the department plays up the 6,500-square-foot home's swimming pool, changing area, staff quarters, extensive garden space and broad verandas.

But buyer beware. There are "title issues" to be worked out between the State Department and Libyan government despite the recent thaw in relations, the prospectus says.

In Canada, $2.25 million will get you the three-story house in the leafy upscale Ottawa suburb of Rockcliffe Park that has been the home to deputy U.S. ambassadors since 1948. The 64-year-old house enjoyed a period of Hollywood celebrity as the home of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the 1990 movie "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge."

Further afield, the State Department is building a new embassy in Nepal, making obsolete its sprawling complex in Katmandu, nestled in the foothills of the towering Himalayas.