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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Club NATO Opens a New Beach Resort |
| 2004-12-05 |
| NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer announced the opening of the Western military alliance's Iraq headquarters during a surprise snap visit to Baghdad on Friday. And addressing a group of alliance officers already in the country to train Iraqi officers, de Hoop Scheffer stressed that NATO was in Iraq "on behalf of the Iraqi people". "It is their priority, they want to be as soon as possible less dependent on others," said de Hoop Scheffer, whose visit was the first by a NATO chief to the war-wracked country. Asked about how many Iraqis had so far benefited from the training, in Iraq and abroad, NATO information officer Colonel Petter Lindqvist said "perhaps a hundred". Lindqvist stressed that NATO itself would not be involved in fighting insurgents, despite a rising tide of violence ahead of the elections. "It is a NATO decision that NATO will not engage on the tactical level and we are not entering into any combat whatsoever, except from self-defence point of view," he said. We don't do windows. Several hundred instructors due in the country will be protected by a NATO force, with the aim of training 1,000 Iraqi officers a year. Lindqvist said NATO at present had 20 instructors in the country and the rest were being trained for the job. Several alliance members opposed to last year's US-led invasion of Iraq will not be participating, including Belgium, France and Germany, as well as Spain, which withdrew its troops from the country following a change of government. The article does not break down participation by country. Let me clue you in. The majority are American. |
| Posted by:Zpaz |
| #1 NATO... So, how's that North Atlantic threat coming along? |
| Posted by: .com 2004-12-05 1:12:23 PM |