ATHENS, April 16: Up to seven European countries may send troops to a peacekeeping force proposed by the United States for Iraq, where violence and looting is rife after the ousting of Saddam Hussein, EU officials said on Wednesday.
Washington has asked Denmark to provide staff to lead a unit of 3,000 personnel as part of US-led efforts to stabilise postwar Iraq, a request Copenhagen says it is considering.
The US-led war deeply divided the EU, with Britain, Italy, Denmark and Spain supporting Washington while France and Germany led the anti-war camp. The bloc used an EU summit in Athens on Wednesday to seek ways of reuniting over its postwar role.
“We have today tried to explore whether there among the colleagues from the EU states is an interest in contributing towards a peacekeeping force in Iraq and there are several countries, which are considering this,” Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters.
Rasmussen said Poland and the three Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — were among states which had expressed an interest in an Iraqi peace force.
“I do not think we reveal too much by saying that there is in the Baltic states a positive interest in participating...and we will most likely also be able to draw on the positive experiences we have in cooperation with Poland,” he said after a meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Rasmussen would not name other European states, saying they, like Denmark, were in the process of consulting national parliaments on what role they could to play in the reconstruction and stabilisation of postwar Iraq.
But EU diplomats said Italy and Spain had also said they were interested.
Rasmussen talked to other European leaders on the margins of the Athens summit, where the 15-nation EU and 10 new member states due to join the bloc next year met to sign their accession treaty.
But French President Jacques Chirac, the loudest opponent of the US plan to attack Iraq without United Nations approval, expressed surprise when journalists asked him about the idea of a stabilisation force.
“I don’t know anything about this proposal,” he said, adding that he did not think such a force would be “an essential part of the solution of the problem” in Iraq.
Rasmussen dismissed suggestions he was on a “recruiting campaign”, saying Denmark was only trying to see if a solid peacekeeping presence could be established in Iraq, regardless of whether Copenhagen led a unit or not.
Rasmussen and Annan briefly discussed security in postwar Iraq, with the UN chief underlining the U.S-led troops’ responsibility in securing stability so reconstruction could begin in safety.—Reuter
