The concession was presented as an exercise in diplomatic house-tidying.
Mr. Bramson, the mayor, has had to adopt a wry stoicism about complaints about his city's unkempt diplomatic houses.
The proposed 2004 budget, which was debated Monday in the Senate, would cut the Foreign Ministry's operating budget by nearly 2percentt, losing 116 jobs through attrition and trimming diplomatic housing allowances by $24 million.
Anifah's ministry earlier this month protested to officials at the US embassy and Australian high commission, over accusations that their diplomatic missions house surveillance equipment used to collect electronic communications.
Even if the military leaves on schedule, the American diplomatic presence, already housed in the United States's largest embassy in the world, will become greater.
The most difficult diplomatic, policing, and housing problem will be that of where to put Ferhat Abbas when he comes, for he is known in advance to be a morbidly sensitive, patriotic Arab and a high symbol of the French ultras' hatred.
Residents in the Gulshan neighborhood, which houses diplomatic missions, hotels and upscale apartments along rutted, dimly lit streets, reported hearing explosions.
Any lingering hopes of a pause in the fighting in Afghanistan went up in flames last week, when central Kabul was rocked by explosions right next to the diplomatic compound that houses the U.S. Embassy.
The diplomatic status of the house may have been lifted; but will the photographs of Fidel Castro have disappeared from the walls?
President Barack Obama has ordered the deployment of another 350 troops to Baghdad to protect US diplomatic facilities, the White house has said.
