Strained by the Afghan Mission, NATO Allies Reject an Iraq Role

Resisting pressure from the Bush administration, Western allies told U.S. officials Friday that the increasing demands of their military effort in Afghanistan prevented them from currently considering a NATO mission in Iraq.

A State Department spokesman denied that the stand was a disappointment. The United States expects NATO to have a role in Iraq, although the nature of its participation will be defined in future talks, U.S. officials said.

The administration has been eager to spread the military burden of securing Iraq and has been pressing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for months to join the effort. NATO’s presence also would give the administration some political relief by broadening the occupation force.

But at a foreign ministers’ meeting at NATO headquarters here, European officials told their American counterparts that they cannot participate yet because they feel overwhelmed by the strain of their mission in Afghanistan, diplomats said.

This message “won’t make [the Americans] very happy,” said an official of a key U.S. ally. He predicted that if NATO does make a “decision in principle” to join the Iraq effort -- as the U.S. has urged -- it won’t happen until just before the NATO summit set for Istanbul, Turkey, at the end of June.

At least 17 of the 26 NATO members already are contributing to the military effort in Iraq, but individually. Leading powers such as France and Germany, which strongly opposed the invasion last year, have been reluctant to send soldiers.

That opposition could be eased if the U.S. seeks a resolution by the U.N. Security Council authorizing a broader international role in Iraq. The U.S. is planning to transfer sovereignty to Iraq on June 30, and a request for NATO help from the new government also would help, a European diplomat said.

The need for additional military support has become pressing as the Iraqi insurgency has claimed more lives among international contractors, U.S. troops and Iraqis helping coalition authorities. March was one of the occupation’s most violent months, marked by the recent gruesome slayings and mutilation of four civilian security contractors.

Given NATO’s commitment to Afghanistan, however, it is unclear how many soldiers could be sent. One official noted that if NATO’s role in Iraq were to be comparable to its role in Bosnia, about 700,000 troops would be needed. But the idea of pulling together such a force from NATO members -- many of them already tapped out by multiple missions -- was “political science fiction,” the official said.

“As we look ahead to a sort of post-coalition ... Iraq, our expectation is that NATO will [have a role] -- that it would be appropriate and desirable for NATO to be involved,” Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman, said in Washington. “Obviously, how and in what context and to what extent is a subject for discussion among the NATO membership. And there are different views on that.”

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said at a news conference that “the important thing is that we’re going to start working on this and spending more time considering what the NATO role might be” in Iraq.

Powell floated the idea of an Iraq mission, possibly including leadership of an international division, in December during a visit to NATO headquarters. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz broached the general idea with the allies before U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq.

Afghanistan “is at the moment NATO’s highest priority and at the same time the biggest challenge,” said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the alliance’s secretary-general.

At a donors conference this week in Berlin, U.S. officials and allies declared that they would not allow Afghanistan to be overwhelmed by deepening violence and the growing narcotics trade.

Despite that determination, NATO has been hard pressed to supply the 10 attack and transport helicopters and hundreds of troops the alliance needs to expand its protection to more remote areas. With 6,200 NATO troops in Afghanistan, the operation lacks enough helicopters, medical evacuation teams and intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities.

“If you can’t get a couple thousand troops and helicopters [for Afghanistan], it’s going to be pretty difficult to think about an operation that needs 7,000 or 8,000,” the allied official said of Iraq.

A NATO official said many contributing countries are “struggling to come to terms” with the huge demands of Afghanistan. Although the Iraq mission is more controversial, the Afghan mission is in some ways a more daunting assignment for small and medium-sized NATO countries because it is remote, vast and culturally unfamiliar.

The NATO meeting began with a formal ceremony recognizing the accession of seven Eastern European countries to NATO, bringing membership to 26. The new members are Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The meeting also marked the first time the Baltic countries have dealt with the Russians, who for so long dominated them, as members of the Western alliance. The two sides came together at a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council, a 2-year-old organization created to foster cooperation between the former rivals. The session was not without friction.

This week, the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, complained that the countries’ accession meant that NATO F-16 fighter jets would be patrolling the skies near the Russian border. Russian officials have expressed unhappiness that, because the Baltic states are not signatories of the conventional forces treaty with the West, they are legally entitled to move any quantity of troops and equipment near the Russian border.

Powell insisted in an interview with reporters from the new NATO states that Russia was not worried about the patrols.

“I don’t think they feel particularly threatened by four fighters that have been moved to the region,” he said.