When Iraqi interim Foreign
Minister Hoshyar Zebari said this week that it was a
matter of "urgency" for the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) to fulfill the promise it made at
last month's Istanbul summit to begin training and
equipping Iraqi troops, he was not understating the
case.
In the worst wave of violence in the
country since the US handed over sovereignty on June 28,
a suicide car bomb killed 10 people outside the Iraqi
government's compound in Baghdad on Wednesday, while
a dozen other people, including the governor of Mosul,
died in separate violence throughout the country. And on
Thursday, at least three policemen were
killed when a suspected car bomb exploded near a police
station in the town of Haditha, north of
Baghdad.
Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who was put under a
new death threat on Wednesday, the second in less than
a month, called the car bombing "naked aggression
against the Iraqi people" and vowed to "bring these criminals
to justice". Allawi said he believes the bombing was
carried out in retaliation for the interim government's
recent crackdown on crime and terror suspects.
Bulgaria's parliament, meanwhile, reaffirmed its
commitment to keeping troops in Iraq, a day after a
militant group beheaded one Bulgarian worker and
threatened to kill another unless US forces release all
Iraqi detainees.
The Philippine government,
however, took a different approach. Some of the
Philippines' 51 troops in Iraq have started leaving the
country a month ahead of schedule. The early withdrawal
comes as militants threatened to kill a Filipino
hostage.
The Baghdad attack killed three Iraqi
national guardsmen and seven civilians and injured at
least 40. Governor Ussama Kachmula of the northern city
of Mosul and two of his bodyguards were shot dead by
four attackers as they traveled from Mosul to Baghdad.
In the flashpoint city of Ramadi, clashes between
insurgents and US marines left five Iraqis dead and
another 21 wounded.
Iraqi minister Zebari made
his the plea after meeting NATO ambassadors in Brussels:
"Our request has been that we need this training you
promised us in Istanbul as soon as possible. We need it.
In fact, we're in a race against time and it's a matter
of urgency. Also, we requested equipment for our
military and our security forces, and we want both
components to be carried out as a package, just to save
time," Zebari said.
NATO
secretary general Jaap
de Hoop Scheffer said alliance members remained
"committed" to helping Iraq, but they were still
discussing who should conduct the training, and how it
should be conducted: "Of course, we are looking at
options at this very moment. These options can include,
for instance, training for border security, training [by
NATO nations] collectively or individually in Iraq,
helping to establish an Iraq-wide command-and-control
capability, and opportunities for training - as I said
[earlier] - outside Iraq," de Hoop Scheffer said.
Some NATO allies, led by France, have said they
will only participate in training that takes place
outside Iraq. They also say only individual NATO member
states - not the alliance as a whole - can act in Iraq.
De Hoop Scheffer told reporters he expected the implementation
of the Istanbul decision to be approved before
next month. He said a team of military NATO experts
had recently returned from Iraq and will report to the
North Atlantic Council, the alliance's highest
decision-making body.
Zebari said the
interim Iraqi government would prefer all the training to
take place inside Iraq, and with the collective
participation of NATO troops. But he added that Iraq
would welcome some training abroad by individual
countries.
Zebari also said NATO could assist
Iraq in improving what he said were serious problems
with border control. De Hoop Scheffer indicated that such
assistance would be limited to the provision of
specialist training. Zebari also said Iraq had asked
NATO to set up direct links with the Iraqi Embassy in
Brussels. He said a specialist liaison officer would be
appointed on the Iraqi side.
Asked to describe
the current condition of the Iraqi armed forces, Zebari
said he was unable to give precise details, but said
Iraq's ultimate goal was to have a professional army
capable of answering to a civilian leadership and of
defending Iraq's borders and national interests.
(Asia Times Online/Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty.)
