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US embassy will move to Battersea
Katharine Barney, Evening Standard2 Oct 2008
The American Embassy is to quit Grosvenor Square, the Evening Standard has learned.
It is to move to Nine Elms in Battersea after escalating conflict with its Mayfair neighbours over increased security measures since September 2001.
Last year the US State Department asked agents to find a new site for the embassy and it was rumoured clothing tycoon Richard Caring was interested in buying the property.
It is currently rented on a triple nine-year lease from the Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor Estate.
Residents had claimed that thousands of lives would be put at risk from an al Qaeda attack which might involve a bomb on the scale of those used by Irish terrorists at Bishopsgate and Docklands.
Reader views (2)
You cannot blame the residents however it only moves the problem elsewhere.
- Gj, NYC, 02/10/2008 20:44
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I wouldn't want to be near such a building these days...it's only a question of time!
- Mel Barrows, Tenerife Canary Islands., 02/10/2008 18:53
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