NATO Reports All 26 Nations Are Aiding Iraq With Training
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By WARREN HOGE
Published: September 22, 2005
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 21 - European countries have overcome their differences with the United States over Iraq, and all 26 members of NATO now provide training and equipment to Baghdad, the secretary general of the group said this week.
The official, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, a former Dutch foreign minister who backed the war while many Europeans opposed it, said in an interview on Tuesday that he would soon raise the flag over a huge "state of the art" complex in Baghdad where NATO is training 1,000 military officers.
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Forum: The Transition in Iraq
He said that NATO had also arranged for Iraqi troops to be trained in Germany, Italy and Norway, and that shipments of equipment were being airlifted from Eastern European countries that use Russian-built equipment compatible with the Iraqis' Soviet-era matériel.
Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said that he was concerned that most European countries still invested too little in military preparedness, and that he was trying to persuade allies of the importance to European security of actions taken far afield.
On military spending, he said, "An operation that costs a lot of money in Afghanistan plays its role in the fight against terrorism, because if that country were to slide back into the black hole again that it was under the Taliban, the problems arising from not engaging it would end up on our doorstep."
NATO has 12,400 troops in Afghanistan, and it is about to take over an American command in the south next spring, to be staffed by the British, Canadians and Dutch.
The United States has urged NATO to consider taking on counterinsurgency missions in Afghanistan in addition to its peacekeeping and reconstruction duties. But Britain, France, Germany and others objected to the idea at a meeting of defense ministers in Berlin last week.
Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said he had devised a command structure that would permit European special forces in Afghanistan to take part in counterterrorism missions without mixing them in with peacekeeping.
"We can guarantee that where it is necessary, the Taliban can be hunted, combat operations will continue and NATO can at the same time play its part," he said.
He said that in his meetings at the United Nations, he was stressing the need to stay alert to the continuing needs of Afghanistan. "The international community should not conclude that now that we have a president elected last year, we have a government, we have a Parliament, that the thing is done," he said.
He said that such jobs as curbing the production of opium, building a judicial system and shaping the police forces should be addressed by the United Nations, the Group of 8 industrial nations, the European Union, private aid groups and major donor countries.
"NATO is there to organize and project stability and security," he said, "but if NATO had to do that in a void because other international organizations turned their faces to other areas, we would not be in an ideal situation."
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