FRANCE: France could envisage a NATO force in Iraq if approved by a sovereign Iraqi government and the United Nations, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said in a newspaper interview published yesterday.
France led opposition to the US-led war in Iraq and until now Mr de Villepin has said it was premature to discuss any NATO presence, which alliance members are likely to discuss at a summit in Istanbul in June.
"First, NATO can only be involved at the behest of an Iraqi government and with the prior agreement of the United Nations," he told Le Figaro newspaper in an interview.
"Great care is needed over what some countries in the region could regard as an act of aggression. Nothing would be worse than triggering a feeling of confrontation between the Arab world and our countries, between the West and Islam," he said.
Mr de Villepin did not say whether France would offer troops for any future NATO mission, reiterating only that Paris was ready to offer police training after power is handed back to Iraqis around a scheduled date of June 30th.
"There is a question of principle," Mr de Villepin said. "Would the arrival in the Middle East of NATO itself be a stabilising or complicating factor?"
The US has asked NATO to play a greater role than the support it now provides to a 23-nation force led by Poland.
After initially sharing France's reticence, Germany, which also opposed the Iraq conflict, has said it would not stand in the way of a NATO mission.
Separately yesterday, the secretary-general of NATO, Mr Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said the alliance stood ready to help any member-state which ran the multi-national division in Iraq, but declined to say when NATO-led troops might go to Iraq.
Poland currently leads a 9,000-strong division of troops from more than 20 nations in a broad swathe of south-central Iraq, but will soon hand the baton to Spain.
NATO itself could take command of this division eventually. "NATO supports the Polish leadership of the multinational division in Iraq. If ... Spain were to take over this leadership, and Spain asked NATO for assistance, then NATO would certainly give it," Mr de Hoop Scheffer told reporters during a visit to Turkey.
NATO is providing logistical support to Poland, one of 18 members of the 26-nation alliance currently in Iraq.- (Reuters)