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Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio plays down possible troop deployment to Iraq
Jordan Times, Wednesday, October 29, 2003
LISBON (AFP) — Portugal's president has played down the possibility that the latest UN resolution on Iraq will lead to the deployment of Portuguese troops to the war-torn country, to join a contingent of national guards that is set to arrive there in November. “That would depend on our possibilities,” President Jorge Sampaio said in an interview with state television RTP on Monday night.
“Portugal is today, if I am not mistaken, the European Union nation with the second-most troops abroad in missions of various types,” he added. “We are already making a big contribution.”
“The decision to send national guards is well-suited to our current possibilities to help in a difficult situation.” Lisbon has pledged to send some 130 national guards to Iraq to take part in a multinational stabilisation force in the country, but their departure has so far been postponed three times.
The national guards, who will be stationed in southern Iraq along with soldiers of Italy's paramilitary Carabinieri police under British military command, were initially scheduled to depart in July.
But the mission was put off until August, and then September, to give the centre-right government time to suitably equip the personnel.
At the beginning of October the government once again put off deployment of the national guards, this time until November, because it said the facilities to house them in Iraq were not yet ready.
When Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, a vocal supporter of the US-led war on Iraq, announced his government's decision to send the national guards, he said Portuguese troops could be deployed at a later date if it was thought appropriate.
But as the head of the nation's armed forces Sampaio, a Socialist who opposed the war, would have to approve any overseas deployment of the country's troops. The president's approval, however, is not needed to send national guards abroad.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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