March 20, 2003	Thursday	Muharram 16, 1424

WASHINGTON: The “coalition of the willing” arrayed against Iraq may bolster the US war effort diplomatically, but US defence officials say that the impending war is still largely an American affair.

Of the 45 or so nations listed in coalition poised to strike Iraq, just a few are offering military support beyond logistical aid and transit rights. Besides the United States, only Britain, with its 45,000 troops, planes and warships, and Australia, with its 2,000-strong phalanx of special forces, fighter planes and Naval vessels, are offering up potent strike capability.

A committee of Denmark’s parliament approved the deployment. It also committed a submarine and a destroyer. A Danish diplomat said the submarine is already in the area, and the destroyer is on its way. The nation will also deploy a medical team.

Other nations have offered troops, but they will mainly play non-combat roles, especially decontaminating battlefields and troops that could be exposed to chemical, biological or radioactive agents. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine have offered up small numbers of troops for those activities.

Pentagon officials said assembling the coalition was much more a diplomatic exercise than a military one. The military component of the coalition that confronted Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War was significantly more substantial, but Saddam Hussein’s forces were thought to be considerably stronger then than they are now, defence officials said.

“Do the Brits and the Aussies bring in good combat capabilities? You bet,” one defence official said. “But let’s be honest. It’s not a fair fight between Iraq and just the United States, even if we’re 7,000 miles from home.”

But a war with Iraq this time would be lacking made-for- television images of Saudi Arabian fighters pilots flying alongside US counterparts, images that went a long way toward defusing tension over a western war against a Middle Eastern nation.

Administration officials emphasized that Middle Eastern nations were among the 15 or so countries that have joined the coalition but have asked not to be identified. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said some of those 15 would be offering “what you might call ‘boots on the ground,’ in terms of providing military support or deploying defensive military units, like, for example, nuclear, biological and chemical specialists to be available for defence of areas if the Iraqi regime should use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.”

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer on Tuesday played down the significance of the scarce military support. “We have all along said, in terms of actual, active combat, there would be very, very few countries,” he said. Instead, he stressed the importance of air corridors for coalition aircraft, basing and logistical support for the war, which several nations would be providing. “You can’t have combat if you don’t have supplies,” he said. “You can’t have combat if you don’t have overflight.”

Still, the contrast between the first Gulf War with its 31- member, combat-ready coalition, and this assault will be stark. Twelve years ago, Arab nations were very much in evidence. Saudi Arabia contributed 66,000 troops, 550 tanks, 300 aircraft and eight ships. Egypt provided 35,000 troops, 120 tanks, 60 aircraft, and 18 ships. Syria sent 19,000 troops to Saudi Arabia and arrayed 50,000 along its border with Iraq, along with 270 tanks.

France, which this time led diplomatic opposition to the use of force against Iraq, supplied 17,000 troops, 350 tanks, 38 aircraft and 14 ships in 1991. Even the tiny African nations of Senegal and Niger provided combat troops to the coalition.

In all, coalition forces provided more than 295,000 troops to augment a US force of 430,000.

This time, even some coalition members are taking pains to distinguish between support for the goal of disarming Saddam and the participation of its forces.

The Hungarian government, for instance, released a statement “to confirm again that it will not send Hungarian troops or combat unites to Iraq.” It is, however, listed as a member of the coalition because it has made an air base available for the training of a small number of Iraqi exiles and has granted US and British aircraft access to Hungarian air space.

The Netherlands, another coalition member, issued a similar statement, affirming support for the US-led effort while reassuring its people that its participation would only go so far. “The Netherlands’ government ... supports a possible action against Iraq. Whereas the Netherlands will not participate in any military action, it will continue to deploy its Patriot missiles in Turkey, for the defence of this NATO partner. And it speaks for itself that The Netherlands will also fully support the reconstruction of a free, democratic Iraq after the armed conflict,” Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende said on Monday.

The 30 coalition members that did release their names are Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Uzbekistan. The State Department listed Japan as available for “post-conflict” support.—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.