France, Germany Back U.S. Plan on Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:32 a.m. ET
KASTELLORIZO, Greece (AP) -- France and Germany, America's harshest critics of the Iraq war, on Saturday reluctantly endorsed a U.S. plan to divide Iraq into three zones and deploy a stabilization force that excludes them.
The initiative, unveiled as the European Union foreign ministers met on a Greek Aegean island, appeared to take EU officials by surprise. Some said they only learned of it from news reports quoting officials traveling with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was on a visit to London.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said the plan ``is not a new situation and is not in contradiction with our discussion about giving the United Nations a role in postwar Iraq.''
The Americans ``can do what they want. This does not bother us at all,'' said a French diplomat.
The United States plans to set up an international military force in three regions of Iraq, with Poland and Britain controlling two zones and U.S. forces the third, U.S. officials said. They said Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Ukraine and Bulgaria would provide troops.
Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewiczs told reporters ``this is a fresh responsibility for my country, but we are ready to share it.''
Poland ``would prefer'' a U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing the stabilization force, but that it should go ahead without one, if necessary, Cimoszewiczs said.
``We see a vital role for the United Nations in humanitarian relief,'' British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters after the meeting.
He briefed Fischer and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on the sidelines of the EU meeting.
He said there was no attempt to sideline France and Germany, although that appeared to be the case. He called past disagreements over Iraq ``a matter of history'' and said it is time to look forward rather than back.
The ministers agreed to mend the trans-Atlantic relationship that was damaged in the months before the war.
They asked the EU head office to draft a strategy on how Europeans can better deal with such issues as international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction in the hands of unstable countries. |
