RI cool to Muslim Iraq force idea
RI cool to Muslim Iraq force idea
Agencies Jakarta/Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, gave a cool reception on Thursday to a Saudi Arabian proposal that troops from Arab or Muslim nations could be sent to Iraq.
Such a force could shore up the U.S. coalition and reduce the need for U.S. troops, who are currently battling a fierce insurgency in Iraq.
Saudi Arabia on Wednesday proposed to the United States that troops from Arab or Muslim nations could be sent to Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi also called on Muslim nations on Thursday to join a proposed force of Islamic troops in Iraq.
Allawi met U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in Saudi Arabia and embraced a Saudi proposal for Arab and Muslim nations other than Iraq's immediate neighbors to provide troops to help secure Iraq in the face of a fierce insurgency.
"This is a global war. These are forces of evil who are acting against us," Allawi told reporters after he and Powell met for about an hour. "I call upon the leaders of the Islamic countries and the Arab countries to close ranks."
A deployment by Muslim nations would be a public relations coup for the United States, which has seen the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq reduced by the withdrawal of the Philippines, Spain, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras.
Iraqi opposes deployment of foreign troops from neighboring countries, including Saudi Arabia. Some of the countries mentioned as possible participants in a security force - Malaysia, Algeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Morocco - are from far outside the region.
But there was no sign Indonesia, an ally of Washington in the war on terror in Southeast Asia but a consistent critic of its invasion of Iraq, was about to join up.
"Our position remains that we will only contemplate sending our troops within the context or framework of the United Nations, in other words as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force," Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa told Reuters on Thursday.
That did not mean a troop operation that was sanctioned by the UN Security Council but under someone else's command, he stressed.
"The only scenario wherein we will contemplate contributing our troops would be if such a force was to be a UN blue beret peacekeeping force under UN command," he said.
Marty also drew a distinction between peacekeeping and peace enforcing.
"Any UN blue beret force of a peacekeeping nature must be there when there is peace to be kept in the first place ... the idea of a UN enforcement force, I don't think anyone is entertaining that."
Recently, Malaysia has agreed to send a small medical team to Iraq.
In Islamabad, a senior Pakistani official told The Associated Press on Thursday that Pakistani Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain discussed the possibility of creating such a force during a visit to Saudi Arabia last week.
When asked if Morocco was considering sending troops to Iraq, an official with the Foreign Ministry said on condition of anonymity that no decision had been made and none was expected soon because government leaders were on vacation through August.
Several weeks ago, another official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, had denied a report that Morocco was considering sending troops.
An official with the 22-nation Arab League, based in Cairo, said Thursday it was too early to comment on the Saudi initiative because the league hadn't yet been informed of it. The official spoke on condition of anonymity. In the past, the league has said any decision to deploy troops rests with each sovereign state.
The U.S.-led coalition force in Iraq numbers 160,000; all but 20,000 are Americans.
Related story on Page 12