Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Baszn Özeti
-J
Thomas Fuller
Letter from Europe
What role for Europe
in cleaning up Iraq?
A
BRUSSELS
little more than a year ago,
Kadim Saleh, a bank teller in
the southern Iraqi city of Basra,
approached a visitor to deliver an urgent
message.
"There is a bomb in my garden but
it did not explode," Saleh said.
He had pleaded with British troops
in the area three times, he said, but
they were too busy to remove the unexploded
munition, which fell one
night into the small flower bed inside
his walled compound.
When Saleh told me the story and
showed me the bomb, it seemed to
carry a message about the war in Iraq:
Ifyou invade a country and ordnance
accidentally lands in someone's front
yard, you shoulâhelp get rid of it.
One can presume that the British
did eventually C01Dearound and take
away the bomb.
But what about countries that were
.hot involved in the invasion of Iraq
and that opposed
.~.
~
I
I
the war? Should
they help remove
the bombs from
gardens, help restore
peace and
generally help
clean up America
and Britain's
mess in Iraq?
Thesequestions
will be at
the heart of discussions in Istanbul
starting on Sunday night, when leaders
gather for a summit meeting of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
France and Germany, having so
Vehemently opposed the war, are
.against NATO leading a military op-
.eration in Iraq.
ne French say the country does
. not need more troops but a working
government; the Germans say they
are overstretched with peacekeeping
operations in Afghanistan, Bosnia and
. Kosovo.
In the face of strong U.S. pressure
to do more, leaders are set to agree to
a creaking compromise: a commitment
from NATO to train Iraqi troops.
Iraq's prime minister, Iyad Allawi,
sent a formal request to NATO this
week for help providing unspecified
"technical" assistance and training
for as mant as 120,000 soldiers.
Yet as the security situation in Iraq
worsens and the June 30 handover approaches,
many analysts and diplomats
are wondering if Europe - and
France and Germany in particular -
should do more.
There appears to be a consensus in
Brussels that Europe will become
more deeply involved in Iraq some
day. The question is how much, and
when?
"We have a key interest in Europe
to see the place become stabilized as
soon as possible and not go up in
flames," said Pieter Feith, deputy director
general for political and military
affairs at the European Union's
Council, the EU's main decision-makingbody.
Two central, but conflicting, considerations
are behind the European
political calculus.
On the one hand, more help in Iraq
might avert the emergence of a failed
state on the Union's southeastern
flank, a scary prospect that would
bring further instability to the. Middle
East and probably more terronsm.
On the other hand, helping out in
Iraq now might mean giving President
George W. Bush a leg up in the
November election.
"I don't think there are many leaders
here in Europe who want to do
anything that would bail out Bush and
help with his re-election campaign,"
said William Drozdiak, head of the
Transatlantic Center, a research organization
in Brussels.
The notion that France, Germany or
Spain might wait until Nov. 3, the day
after the U.S. presidential election, to
offer help to Iraq is the sad reality of
an enormously divisive war.
Never mind that the late arrival of
help would be terrible news for the
Iraqi government, which presumably
could use lots of help now and in the
first tender weeks after the handover
of power.
.Drozdiak calls the reluctance of
many European leaders "human
nature."
"Bush is coming back, he's got big
. problems in Iraq and says Europe ha~
a moral responsibility to bail them
out," Drozdiak said. "Well, I think the
initial reaction of many leaders is to
say, 'Hold on a minute.'We told you
this was going to be a disaster and you
disregarded our advice.' "
Some analysts in Brussels say that
France and Germany might be mo~e .
comfortable helping Iraq through .th~.
European Union rather than NATO..
And the Union's foreign policy offic~
in Brussels recently set out a prelim~
inary strategy for greater engagement
Wit4:Iraq..
Feith said in an.interVIew that EU
countries theoretically could provide
police forces. .
"One can imagine that we cOuld do
an advisory police mission," he said
"We can provide expertise in an overall
effort to strengthen the rule of
law." .
This modest plan seems to rein-
.force the hackneyed Brussels aphorism
that the United States cooks the
dinner and Europe does the dishes.
That cliché refers to the United
States leading militaryoperations and
the Europeans taking over the peacekeeping.
And yet clearly in the case of Iraq,
there is more work to be done than
simply washing up. .
Three U.S. senators last week urged '
France and Germany to change their
stance and to allow NATO to assume
a military role in Iraq.
"It's time for NATO; and particularly
the French and the Germans, to
act more responsibly now, notwith-
Few European leaders
'want to do anything that
would bailout
standing their frustration with President..Bush,"
said Senator Joseph Biden,
a Democrat.
Onè problem with this plea is that
NATe) has othér fires to put out. Hamid
Karzai, the Afghan leader, will request
at the summ~~.meeting that the
alliance add a fe",lthousand peacekeeping
troops before the Afghan elections
in September. There are currently
about 6,000 NATO
peacekeepers in Afghanistan.
As for Iraq, Steven Everts, a defense
expert at the Center for European Reform
in London, says there is a better
solution than more troops. The most
important thing for Iraq today is that
the nascent government should come
out from under the shadow of the
United States, he said.
"What Iraq needs right now is a
political showdown between the new
Iraqi government and the Americans
- and which the Iraqis have to win,"
Everts said. "They need to show their
own population that they can tell the
Americans to get lost."
This, Everts said, would give the
government the legitimacy that it
needs to fight the insurgency and
would help Iraq more than any NATO
soldiers or EU assistance.
International
Bush.'
Herald Tribune
June 26-27, 2004
77