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.
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