Ясновельможные паны как мост между Европой и Америкой....
Аннотация - НАТО собирается поддерживать поляков в Иране, но "за сценой" - развединформация, снабжение и т.д.
13:31 02Jun2003 RTRS-NATO agrees to back Polish-led force in Iraq
By John Chalmers
MADRID, June 2 (Reuters) - NATO nations agreed on Monday to provide support in five areas from intelligence to logistics for the Polish-led stabilisation force in Iraq, taking the alliance into the furthest-flung operation of its 54-year history.
The decision came on the eve of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Madrid, which officials hope will be a chance to heal wounds over the Iraq war and celebrate the alliance's transformation to meet security threats anywhere in the world.
NATO's flag will not fly in Iraq. The 19 nations agreed on Monday, after advice from military planners, to provide Poland with behind-the-scenes backup on intelligence, communications, logistics, movement coordination and force generation.
"The advice was approved and agreed by the 19 nations...and they said let's get on with it," a NATO spokesman said.
Washington would like to see NATO's role in Iraq beefed up eventually -- as it will be in Afghanistan on August 11, when the alliance moves from back-up support to full command of the 4,500-strong International Security Assistance Force.
The Polish force of up to 7,500 troops will operate in a south-central zone between Basra and Baghdad, a sensitive area that includes some of Iraq's holy cities. The United States will take responsibility for two zones and Britain for one.
Ukraine and Bulgaria have promised to contribute troops and Denmark and Norway some officers for the Polish force, which is expected to be fully operational by August.
Polish Premier Leszek Miller said after talks with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Szczecin that Denmark would contribute staff officers from the Polish-German-Danish NATO corps based in the north-western port.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns told reporters ahead of the two-day Madrid meeting that the decisions to take over the Afghanistan peacekeeping operation and back Poland's mission in Iraq showed NATO was living up to its transformation pledges.
"These two decisions...together are historic for NATO because they'll be the very first two operations in 54 years where NATO will have gone outside of Europe," he said.
The Cold War alliance, which traditionally focused on the security of its eastern borders, agreed last year to gird itself for security threats such as terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction anywhere in the world.
"The 'out-of-area' debate that all of us knew and loved so well is dead, completely," Burns said. "We ended it theoretically a year ago...we have now ended it in a practical way by these two decisions."
NATO was plunged into a damaging crisis in February when Belgium, France and Germany blocked moves to bolster the defences of ally Turkey -- Iraq's northern neighbour -- arguing they would amount to accepting the inevitability of war.
"Nothing big will come out of this meeting," said one NATO official in Madrid. "This meeting is all about our recovery."
(Additional reporting by Marcin Grajewski in Warsaw)
((Reporting by John Chalmers, editing by Sami Aboudi; Reuters Messaging: john.chalmers.reuters.com@reuters.net; Brussels newsroom +32 2 287 6841, fax +32 2 230 5573))
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Monday, 02 June 2003 13:31:09
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