Billions more needed to secure US embassies

6/22/2008 WASHINGTON That's despite an intensive 4-billion-dollar drive to protect American missions abroad. And documents reviewed by The Associated Press show it will cost more than 8 billion dollars to upgrade or replace the most vulnerable of those facilities.

The State Department's Long-Range Overseas Buildings Plan calls for 7 and a-half billion dollars for new buildings at about 50 foreign posts. It will take 850 million dollars for a "major rehabilitation" of 40 others through 2013. An additional 60 embassies and consulates will need to be replaced or will require substantial work by 2018.

The 450-page plan was sent to Congress last week. The details of it are labeled "sensitive but unclassified" and not to be shared with foreign governments.