Punishing the U.N. and the anti-war camp for opposing its unilateral invasion of Iraq, the United States decided to form an Iraq stabilization force in collaboration with its war allies Britain and Poland. Washington is forging a "multinational" force to "stabilize" post-war Iraq and will seek neither a United Nations mandate nor active participation of those countries who opposed the war, a senior U.S. official said late Friday, May 2.
| Further proof we're not crazy... |
Iraq will be divided into three sectors to be commanded by the United States, Britain and Poland, said the official. "The thought is the force would be generated by a coalition of the willing on a bilateral basis," said the official. That would exclude a U.N.-backed force, noted AFP. British Defense Minister Geoff Hoon set the plan in motion at a meeting in London Wednesday, April 30, of 16 countries, grouping Britain, the U.S., 10 other NATO members and four non-NATO states. France, Germany and Russia, staunch opponents of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, were not invited to the London "Initial Coalition Stabilization Operations Conference."
| "We'll let you know if we need any help..." |
The American official said no U.N. mandate would be sought for the force, but if some countries felt they needed a NATO umbrella to participate it would be taken up in the alliance's defense planning committee. France is not a member of the committee and so could not use its veto. Asked whether the three ant-war countries were being excluded as punishment for their opposition to the war, the official said, "That's one view."
A bit more on this...Ten nations led by the United States and Britain agreed to provide occupation forces for Iraq, the senior administration official said. The United States, Britain and Poland will provide division commanders for separate sectors in Iraq, with additional troops provided by Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Denmark, Bulgaria, Albania and the Netherlands.
| No Frenchies, no Fritzies, no Ivans. The only (nominal) Muslims are the Albanians. No Arabs, not even Kuwaitis or Qataris, though there'll surely be NGOs. Two former Russian client states. I guess Kuchma's gotten off the poop list... |
The Philippines, South Korea, Qatar and Australia will provide non-combat forces for missions such as staffing hospitals, destroying munitions and searching for weapons of mass destruction, officials said.
| Hope they plan on sending lotsa people. There's certainly lotsa munitions to destroy... |
The American sector will center on Baghdad, the British sector on Basra, and the Polish sector on Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Iraq. The number of combat-ready forces in Iraq may at first exceed the nearly 158,000 U.S. and British forces now in the country, as arriving multinational forces overlap with forces already patrolling the California-sized nation of 25 million people.
Rumsfeld said he hoped that other nations would send troops for the three sectors that would be under the overall command of Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the commanding general of the war in Iraq. The number of U.S. forces remaining in Iraq will be determined in part by "how many other countries will be coming in to participate," Rumsfeld said. "The larger the number of countries that participate, the fewer number of forces from the United States will be needed." Rumsfeld said the United States would maintain as many troops in Iraq as necessary to allow humanitarian and reconstruction work to progress. He said it would be "a terrible mistake to think that Iraq is a fully secure, pacified environment. It is not. It is dangerous." |