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NATO agrees to tràin Iraqi forces
By Eric Schmitt
ISTANBUL: NATO leaders agreed
Monday to help rebuild Iraq's beleaguered
security forces just hours after
the U.S.-led occupation turned sovereignty
over to an Iraqi interim government
that requested the alliance's aid
earlier this month. But many crucial
details remain unresolved.
Bush administration officials heralded
thé Iraqi training accord and an
agreement to increase NATO troops in
Afghanistan to bolster security for
elections there in September elections
as proof the alliance could overcome
divisions to reach consensus on contentious
issues far beyond the members'
national borders.
"We have decided today to offer
NATO's assistance to the government
of Iraq with the training of its security
forces," Bush and the other is'national
leaders said in a statement.
But the Iraq accord fell far short of
the administration's original goal to
dispatch NATO ground troops to join
U.S.-led forces in Iraq, which France
and Germany flatly opposed. In a sign
of the rifts stilllingering since the Iraq
war the statement said the alliance
wo~ld only "encourage nations to contribute
to the training of the Iraqi
armed forces."
The United States and other allies
have provided some training inside and
outside Iraq for months, and a threestar
American general was recently assigned
to help improve how Iraq's
206,000 security forces are trained and
equipped. But with Iraqis regaining
sovereignty, the interim prime minister,
Iyad Allawi, asked NATO earlier
this month for additional help.
NATO plannerS will now meet with
Iraqi officials to decide on training priorities,
then match up the requests with
those willing to help. They were also
ordered to report back on other possible
assistance for Iraqisecurity institutions.
But the timing, location and
numbers of trainers involved remain
unanswered. ' "
"How this training will be worked
out I do not know yet," Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer, NATO's secretary general,
told reporters.
'
NATO leaders opened the two-day
meeting under extraordinary security,
and to the surprising news that the
transfer of sovereignty in Iraq had been
moved up 48 hours in an effort to preempt
insurgent attacks. Large swaths of
Istanbul, a city of 15 million people,
were blo~kèd ofé, and Thrkish warships
patrolled the Bosporus waterway.
Even so, thousands of protesters took
to the streets in severallocations across
,the city. They were kept far from the
conference center in central Istanbul
'where NATO leaders have gathered.
DemoIlliU'ators hurled paving stones at
the police, who responded with batons,
tear gas and water cannon. At least 48
police officers and demonstrators were
wounded, according to the authorities
here.
Inside the conference halls, alliance
leaders sought to play down tensions
that have flared over Bush's Iraq policy,
but they remained divided over how to
carry out the training plan.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
has insisted that the bulk of the training
,should be conducted inside Iraq, to help
speed the integrati6n of newly trained
recruits into their units and to allow allied
mentors to keep a watchful eye over
,their charges.
But French and German officials said
they would not send instructors to Iraq,
preferring instead to train at elite military
academies in their own countries.
President Jacques Chirac of France
said that any training should be left to
individual NATO nations, not the alliance
as a whole. '~y NATO footprint
on Iraqi soil would be unwise."
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany
said: "The engagement of NATO
is reduced to training and only training.
:We have made clear that we don't want
:to see German soldiers in Iraq."
, Some independent security analysts
expressed skepticism that NATO's new
training mission would result in any
meaningful changes.
"It's a political declaration with no
real practical meaning," Ivo Daalder, a
senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
'in Washington, said in an e-mail
message. "Countries that will provide
training were doing so before the decla-
The accord fell short of
the U.S. goal to dispatch
NATO ground troops.
ration, and I doubt that countries that
were not will now be so inclined."
Allied officials that said whatever,
training is conducted is expected to be .
coordinated with the efforts now,
headed by Lieutenant General David
Petraeus, a highly regarded former
commander of the 100st Airborne Division
who is now helping Iraqi officials
oversee the training of their forces.
Military planners at NATO
headquarters in Brussels are already
rushing to examine how alliance members
can meet the Iraqis' requirements.
Senior military officers in Iraq applauded
NATO's new commitment to
training and suggested approaches that
the alliance could follow to best meet.
the Iraqis' needs.
"They could individually or collectively
contribute ever,ything from slots
'at their military schools for Iraqi soldiers
to sets of equipment to mentorsadvisers
to drill sérgeants," one senior
military officer in Iraq said in an e-mail
message. "Better yet might be money
that the Iraqis could use to buy additional
equipment over that which we're
purchasing for them."
NATO also announced on Monday
that it wpuld expand its security role in
Afghanistan. That would fulfill a political
pledge the alliance made months
ago, but which ran into hurdles when
General James Jones, NATO's top mili-
'tary commander, went "tin-cupping"
member nations, as Rumsfeld put it, for
actual troops, helicopters, and other
equipment.
NATO officials have finally been able
to cobble together enough forces and
equipment, including helicopters,
cargo planes and quick-reaction forces,
to honor the agreement. Under the plan,
NATO will expand to about 10,000
troops from, the 6,500-member force in
and around Kabul, to operate a total of
five provincial civilian-military reconstruction
teams, initially in the north.
Two of the these teams - one operated
by the British in Mazar-i-Sharif
and another by the Germans in Kunduz.
Two other smaller, satellite teams, in
Mynama and Fizabad, will be expanded.
A new fifth team, in Baghlan,
would be operated by the Dutch.
Other teams in the west of the country
- promised by the. time of the
NATO talks here - are not ready, allied
officials said.
'The larger troop presence includes
about 1,500 to 2,000 allied troops to
h~lp provide security around the country
for the national elections that are
scheduled to be held in September.
The New York TImes
International Herald Tribune
June 29, 2004
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