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Top official sees likely NATO engagement in Iraq
Khaleej Times, (Reuters)
27 September 2003
BERLIN - A senior NATO official was quoted on Saturday as saying the military alliance would likely get involved in Iraq, just as it had done in Afghanistan.
“If, as is to be expected, there is still a great need for troops to stabilise the country, NATO will be faced with this question, sooner rather than later,” General Harald Kujat, head of NATO’s military committee, told Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
“We must ask ourselves whether we can afford for a NATO member, and the biggest at that, to get into difficulties and be left alone,” he said in an interview with the German paper released ahead of publication on Sunday.
The committee Kujat heads is the NATO’s highest military authority which includes the Chiefs of Defence of its member states and advises on military policy and strategy.
Kujat said NATO involvement in Iraq could follow the route taken in Afghanistan where the alliance initially supported individual members indirectly and then took control of a sector.
NATO took command last month of the 5,000-strong, UN-mandated force in the Afghan capital in Kabul, which has sought to maintain security since US-led forces ousted the Taleban in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Kujat said NATO was ideally positioned for Iraq: “It accommodates both sides -- the Europeans with their demand for multilateralism, the Americans with their condition that they continue to be the leading military power.”
Kujat, who was general inspector of the German military before moving to NATO last year, called on the German government, which opposed the US-led war in Iraq, not to stand in the way of any future NATO engagement in Iraq.
Faced with daily guerrilla attacks on its troops in Iraq and spiralling costs, Washington is working on a new UN resolution with the aim of winning more international support for its occupation both in terms of soldiers and cash.
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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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