NATO Training Unit OKd Amid U.S.-France Spat

NATO ambassadors agreed Friday to dispatch a small military contingent to Iraq to train Iraqi security forces, but a dispute over the command structure of the force remained unresolved.

Officials with the defense alliance announced in Brussels that a 40-member advance team would depart within days for Baghdad to prepare Iraqi staff for a NATO operation there. The alliance will begin training Iraqi forces outside the country in August.

“Through this assistance, the alliance is contributing substantially to the goal shared by the entire international community: to help Iraq provide for its own peace and security,” NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said.

Alliance leaders still must work out the delicate question of the command structure for the Baghdad training force, an issue that has caused more tension between the United States and France.

Washington wants a commander of the U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq to have authority over the NATO trainers. Paris has insisted that the force answer to the NATO hierarchy. Its position has had the support of Germany, Belgium and Spain.

The advance team will report by Sept. 15 to Brussels -- where the 26-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization has its headquarters -- with recommendations for structuring the relationship between the NATO training unit and U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq.

“NATO will not be absorbed by the coalition,” a French diplomat said this week during negotiations in Brussels. The government of French President Jacques Chirac wants to avoid any scenario in which the alliance could be drawn into combat in Iraq.

France led international opposition to the war in Iraq. Last year, French representatives in Brussels resisted efforts to have NATO play even a symbolic role in the war.

French diplomats have not wavered from their view that the war was a mistake, citing the bloodshed and chaos in Iraq and the failure of the United States to find weapons of mass destruction. France has made it clear that it will not send troops to join the U.S.-led forces on the ground.

Nonetheless, France has tried to smooth relations with the United States, especially after Iraq was granted sovereignty late last month.

The impasse in Brussels was resolved Friday, sources said, when France offered to set aside the disagreement over command structure to let the first phase of the training mission get underway.