U.S. EMBASSY IS FORTRESS ON A HILL

AMMAN, JORDAN, AUG. 13 -- When it opened in 1992, the U.S. Embassy in Jordan was immediately dubbed "Fort Apache" by some of the diplomats who worked there.

Fort Knox is more like it.

A security-man's paradise, the state-of-the-art embassy meets every safety standard U.S. experts could dream up: solid steel doors, some thick enough to withstand a half-hour assault by machine guns and battering rams; windows and walls designed to repel artillery rounds; bunkered havens stocked with enough provisions and communications equipment to keep trapped diplomats alive and in touch for more than three days.

And unlike the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, where bombs last Friday killed 257 people, the embassy in Amman sits atop a hill, regally remote from the sweltering city below.

"There's a lot to be said for a facility like this. When you look at TV, and what happened in Kenya, no one ever gets anything like that close to this embassy," an American diplomat said.

The trade-off is that the facility here is not universally acclaimed as a user-friendly place, especially for Jordanians. Spread out over 12 acres, and set far back from the surrounding roads, the $50 million embassy has the grandeur of a palace -- and can be nearly as intimidating.

In a city of 1 million people, the embassy is within walking distance of practically no one. Some locals, who watched warily as the embassy took shape on a former sheep pasture during the Persian Gulf War, suspected that a huge round warehouse in the back of the complex was a missile silo.

Since the bombings in Africa, embassy officials around the world have been on heightened alert, and business has been suspended at half a dozen embassies. Today in Amman, when an American visitor waiting in the embassy's main entrance hall jotted some notes, he was promptly confronted by a pair of huffing security officers, who wanted to know his business -- and just why he was writing in a pad.

"Sorry," said one of the officers, James Moss. "This place is state-of-the-art, but still it can have its blind spots."

For Americans who work there, the embassy is a mixed bag. True, it is safer. True, too, it has improved efficiency by gathering together seven or eight facilities, agencies and departments that had been spread out all over the city before 1992. But being segregated in such a place 15 or 20 minutes from the center of town, some diplomats acknowledge, it is more difficult to get out, make contacts with Jordanians and do their jobs.

"If your job is to be in the management side of the embassy all day, or in the support staff, then it's wonderful," said one American diplomat who knows Amman well. "But if you're supposed to be out and about, then it's a bit isolated."

Before the new embassy opened July 4, 1992, most U.S. diplomats worked in a cramped office building in the center of town, across the street from the Intercontinental Hotel. A small car bomb had exploded in the hotel's parking lot, so the old embassy's facade was heavily sandbagged.

But Jordan, a moderate Arab country and a major recipient of U.S. assistance, is not considered an especially risky posting for Americans, and the old embassy was part of the city's pulse.

Applicants for visas to the United States would drop by on their lunch breaks to pick up a form. Diplomats wandered out at lunchtime to the grilled-meat sandwich stands down on the corner. A block away, at a low-security building that housed the American Cultural Center and the U.S. Information Service, an elderly security man seated behind a desk nodded lazily at visitors coming and going to the library, English lessons, lectures, movies and conferences.

"It was easy access, and it was very nice," said Khalwa Abu-Qura, who worked at the U.S. Information Service in the late 1970s and early 1980s. "Every six months they'd send somebody from Washington, a security officer, to check the fire escapes and change the doors. My secretary would tell them, Instead of changing the doors, why don't you change your policy?' "

The atmosphere at the old embassy and cultural center was relaxed, said Abu-Qura. That's all changed now, she said. "Now it's, my God, even though they know me and I have business there, I have to go through so many doors and gates. It's intimidating."

Construction on the new embassy in Amman began in 1988, five years after the devastating bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and shortly after a commission headed by retired U.S. Adm. Bobby Inman urged that security at American facilities around the world be radically reinforced.

Inman's detailed recommendations were incorporated into the design and placement of the Amman embassy. But when construction began, some diplomats were concerned that it was too far from the center of town. The only other major buildings within hundreds of yards were the British Embassy and a private club. Sheep wandered through the construction site.

In the new embassy, everything was consolidated. Not only are the chancery, consulate and cultural center within the walls of the sprawling compound, so is the house where the Marine contingent lives, warehouse, motor pool, ambassador's residence, commissary and American club for diplomats and selected outsiders, complete with swimming pool.

The complex appeared so vast when it opened that it seemed to some like overkill. At the time just 90 Americans and 150 Jordanians worked full time at the embassy. Today there are more than 125 full-time Americans, plus many others who rotate through on short assignments. About 230 Jordanians work there.

What's more, the opening of the embassy has heralded a real estate boom in Abdoun, the section of western Amman where it is located. Roads have been improved and luxury villas built in the neighborhood. The Jordanian ministries of transportation, communications and public works have built new headquarters near the embassy. Still, diplomats acknowledge, it is far from most of the action.

"We miss the {sandwich} stand and taking our laundry over to the Intercontinental," said one diplomat. "But now we have grown into this building." CAPTION: Jordanian women staged a sit-in outside the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy in Amman last year.

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