WARSAW, Sept 3: Poland took command on Wednesday of a force of 9,000 soldiers controlling a large swathe of Iraq, in an unprecedented high-risk operation thrust upon the former Eastern bloc country by the United States.

The mission has largely been seen as a reward for Warsaw’s loyalty to Washington in the bitter divide over the US-led military drive to oust dictator Saddam Hussein.

The former communist state suddenly jettisoned to international prestige, chosen as the third country after the United States and Britain to assume charge as an occupying force.

But mounting tension and murderous suicide attacks in Iraq — one last Friday inside the future Polish zone — could tarnish some of the medal’s shine and has already trimmed down territory under Polish control.

Undaunted, President Aleksander Kwasniewski stressed on Wednesday that Poland maintained faith in its mission.

“There is no way we are going to abandon the job after the first or second setback, to say ‘sorry, we didn’t realize how hard it would be’,” he said on Polish radio.

Similar stoicism was shown by General Andrzej Tyszkiewicz, the head of Poland’s multi-national division, when the US Marines handed him command of five provinces in south-central Iraq between Baghdad and Basra, just north of the British zone.

The Polish-led division “was founded with the help of our American friends and thanks to the brave decision by 21 countries” that will contribute troops, Tyszkiewicz said at the ceremony in Hilla, the site of ancient Babylon.

Poland, he said, remained firm in its desire to “help Iraqi people, and to wipe out the traces of Saddam Hussein’s monstrous dictatorship and build a new basis of peaceful existence.”

But the press here has started questioning Warsaw’s pro-US strategy, and an opinion poll in early August showed that 60 percent of Poles oppose sending troops to an Iraqi stabilization force while only 34 percent approve.

Rzeczpospolita, one of Poland’s most influential papers, conceded that “our presence in Iraq includes enormous risks”.

But it saw the mission as a “test of Poland’s maturity, no doubt the most difficult it has ever had to pass.”

In Brussels, George Robertson, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which Poland joined in 1999, said he had “every confidence they will do a superb job.”

Naming Poland as one of the post-war commanders was also seen as a bid to help mend divisions within Nato, which was sharply split over the Iraq war.

Robertson on Wednesday pledged Nato’s continued support for the Polish forces, stressing they were “playing a major role, with Nato support, in helping to stabilize a nation devastated by three wars” and the Saddam dictatorship.—AFP