[Slonopotam845]

NATO plans Iraq mission despite Chiraq
By Guy Dinmore in Washington and James Drummond and Nicolas Pelham in Baghdad
Published: July 2 2004 20:48 | Last Updated: July 2 2004 20:48

Top Nato commanders are to lead the alliance's first mission to Iraq next week to prepare for the training of security forces inside the country, in spite of the objections of Jacques Chirac, the French president, to using the Nato banner inside Iraq.


A senior US official said on Friday that two American officers, General James Jones, the alliance's supreme commander, and Admiral Gregory Johnson, commander of joint force command Naples, would lead the delegation.

"We are not going to fly battalions of Iraqi soldiers out of the country. We are not going to be distracted by French rhetoric," the official commented.

But the US official, who asked not to be named, rejected media reports suggesting the pre-war transatlantic rift between the US and France threatened the commitment made at this week's Istanbul Nato summit to help Iraq's new government.

The official described Mr Chirac as having been a "little emotional" at his press conference in Istanbul when he had objected to Nato training forces within Iraq, suggesting differences between Paris and Washington were over means, not ends. He said the US welcomed the French offer to train Iraqi police in France.

The US and France, he said, were still working on ways to send additional Nato forces to Afghanistan ahead of elections planned for September. He said President Hamid Karzai wanted to keep to that timetable and the US would support him. France has objected to using Nato's rapid response force for the job.

Analysts in Washington suspect Mr Chirac, and possibly Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, will refrain from offering substantial aid for Iraq before the US presidential election in November.

"Basically, at [Nato's summit in Turkey] we saw an attempt to mask disagreement through agreed statements. In reality, the divisions within Nato remain," commented Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution. "Those who opposed Bush before the war have no incentive to support him now. This is partly because they believe the course embarked upon is bound to fail."

The transfer of sovereignty to Iraq's interim government this week has prompted some Arab countries to consider participating in peacekeeping.

Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister, was reported to have written to the leaders of Bahrain, Oman and Morocco asking them to join other countries in the UN-sanctioned force.

Oman and Morocco, however, have for the moment refused. But Yemen and Jordan have signalled that they could respond positively to an Iraqi request. Reuters reports: The US army has charged four soldiers, three of them with manslaughter, over the drowning of an Iraqi prisoner, officials said on Friday.

Newspaper reports in Colorado, where the soldiers were based, said they were accused of forcing two Iraqis to jump off a bridge in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, on January 3.