French-US tussles reopen NATO wounds
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-06-30 01:11

Tussles between France and the United States over how to bring security to Iraq and Afghanistan brought a sour end to a NATO summit Tuesday that was meant to heal the divisions of last year's Iraq war.

U.S.

French President Jacques Chirac attends a state dinner for the NATO summit in Istanbul June 28, 2004. Chirac told U.S. President George W. Bush to mind his own business on Monday after Bush called on the European Union to fix a date for Turkey to start EU entry talks. [Reuters]

President Bush traveled to Europe facing domestic pressure in a presidential election year to show he has allies in Iraq. But France muddied the picture by querying Bush's interpretation of deals forged at the summit.

"We are friends (of the United States), we are allies. We are not servants, of course. And when we don't agree we don't say it aggressively but we say it in a firm manner," French President Jacques Chirac told a news conference.

Chirac, a fierce critic of the Iraq war, said a deal agreed Monday on training Iraqi security forces did not entail sending NATO troops there. He said this would be "dangerous, counter-productive and misunderstood by the Iraqi people."

U.S. officials insist that the accord, agreed on the day U.S. occupying forces formally handed power to an interim Iraqi government, does mean NATO will send a mission to Iraq.

"Every ally agreed to a collective single mission," said a senior NATO official. "There was a lot that went into that line, hours of negotiation."

The Iraq training deal is already much more modest than the troop deployment Washington had initially sought from the alliance, which was scotched by France and Germany, who also opposed NATO help to Turkey ahead of the Iraq war.

U.S. President George W. Bush speaks with the Ortakoy Mosque and the Bosphorus bridge in the background, which spans Europe and Asia, at Galatasary University in Istanbul after the NATO summit June 29, 2004. Bush said that Turkey belongs in the European Union and that Europe is 'not the exclusive club of a single religion' in what amounted to a rejection of French President Jacques Chirac. [Reuters]

Chirac also vetoed a U.S. proposal to deploy NATO's new strike force for the Afghan elections, a move one U.S. official said had infuriated Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai had pressed NATO to rush troops to his country to secure the September polls, embarrassing allies reluctant to provide forces for the mission.

"I would like you to please hurry, as NATO, in Afghanistan: come sooner than September...," Karzai told the 26 NATO leaders.

AFGHAN PROBLEMS

Chirac told a news conference the elite NATO Response Force, set up last year with a heavy French contingent but not due to become fully operational until October 2006, should only be used when there is a security crisis, not for routine operations.

"Just one country opposed using elements of the force," the NATO official said, referring to France.

NATO agreed Monday to add roughly 1,500 troops to its 6,500-strong peacekeeping force for the polls, but it has drawn criticism for restricting its deployment to Kabul and the relatively stable north of the violence-plagued country.

The alliance has tried to showcase its Afghan operation as proof it has transformed itself from a Cold War defense machine into a force for combating modern security threats such as terrorism far beyond its European and North American borders.

But the troop shortages have undermined its credibility. In Kabul, Defense Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimy said: "It's up to...NATO, but this is not sufficient, we expect more."

Chirac also clashed with Bush over the Middle East, criticizing the U.S. policy of isolating Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He sent his foreign minister to meet the veteran Arab leader in the West Bank Tuesday.

Monday, Chirac chided Bush for backing Turkey's bid to join the European Union, saying this was none of Washington's business. EU leaders are to decide in December on Turkey's bid.

Undaunted, Bush said in a speech before leaving Istanbul that Turkey's EU entry would be "a crucial advance in relations between the Muslim world and the West." Turkey, a secular democracy, is the only Muslim member of NATO.

Security remained tight during the summit, though a blast in a plane at Istanbul airport injured three people hours before Bush flew out from the same location. It followed a series of small explosions before the summit blamed on anti-NATO leftists.

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