Mongolia considers the United States a “strategic partner” in the war on terrorism and will not pull out of the U.S.-led security operation in Iraq, Mongolian President Natsagiin Bagabandi said in an interview yesterday.
The president said Mongolia’s cliffhanger June 27 elections, which produced an almost evenly divided parliament, would not affect the country’s deployment of about 130 troops to Iraq, the third rotation of Mongolian forces in the country since the war concluded last year.
“So far in our country, there is no disagreement among the political parties over dispatching our forces to Iraq, and there is no disagreement on our strong relationship with the United States,” Mr. Bagabandi said, speaking through an interpreter with editors and reporters of The Washington Times.
President Bush noted Mongolia’s contribution to the postwar Iraq mission in an Oval Office meeting with the Mongolian president yesterday afternoon.
With several nations in the U.S.-led coalition either ending or scaling back their deployments to Iraq, White House spokesman Scott McClellan cited Mongolia as one piece of proof that the coalition still enjoys strong international support.
Mongolia’s deployment in Iraq is more than twice the size of the Philippine contingent of 51 troops, which Manila said this week it was recalling ahead of schedule after an Islamist militant group threatened to execute a Filipino hostage.
With just 2.5 million people in a landlocked nation twice the size of Texas, Mongolia in recent years has pursued an unexpectedly prominent and activist foreign policy, cultivating relations with neighboring China and Russia while preserving strong military and political ties with the United States.
In addition to its Iraq deployment, Mongolia took part in peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan and is helping train Afghanistan’s fledgling army. Mr. Bagabandi spoke yesterday of increasing cooperation with NATO’s Partnership for Peace.
Ulan Bator earlier this month played unlikely host to a groundbreaking multinational training exercise involving forces from Britain, China, France and the United States to explore training procedures for a proposed permanent international peacekeeping force.
Although last month’s elections may herald a period of political uncertainty, analysts say, the largely peaceful voting — the eighth general election since Mongolia broke free from Soviet political domination 12 years ago — was a triumph for democracy in a relatively impoverished, semi-nomadic land best known to history as the launching pad for Genghis Khan.
“It showed how — notwithstanding [China’s] attempts to pretend otherwise — that democracy can take root in even the most traditional of Asian societies,” said Heritage Foundation researcher John J. Tkacik Jr.
The 54-year-old president, a food technologist by training, was first elected president in 1997, winning 60 percent of the vote. A leading figure in the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP), the former communist party that dominated the country’s political life for most of the last century, he was re-elected to his post in 2001.
The Mongolian president said the United States has been a consistent supporter of democratic pluralism in his country, a vast plateau of desert and steppe where grazing cattle, sheep and camels vastly outnumber the human population.
Mongolia in May was named one of the first 16 recipients of the Bush administration’s Millennium Challenge Account program, which targets U.S. aid to developing countries that have adopted strong economic policies and a respect for the rule of law.
In the interview, Mr. Bagabandi said the U.S. war on global terrorism was one that even remote countries such as his could not sit out.
“We understand that not only the United States but all of humankind is threatened by terrorism,” he said. “Terrorism does not recognize borders, it does not make any distinction between big and small countries.
“If Mongolia succeeds in keeping our 1.5 million square kilometers of territory immune from terrorists, we would consider that a significant contribution to the war on terror.”
He said the Mongolian mission to Iraq, which includes soldiers, construction specialists and medical personnel, was not an aggressive action but one designed to help rebuild the country and “stop terrorism on Iraqi territory.”
Mr. Bagabandi’s U.S. visit comes at a time of unexpected political uncertainty back home.
Defying pre-election predictions, the president’s ruling MPRP saw its huge majority in the Great Hural, the Mongolian parliament, evaporate in the June 27 vote.
The opposition Motherland Democratic Coalition, a more free market-oriented alliance of parties which had been ousted from power in 2000, finished in a virtual tie for seats in parliament, leading to charges of voting fraud, court challenges and legislative boycotts.
The close vote in a country used to sweeping majorities has tested the young democracy, but all the protests and political maneuvering have been peaceful.
More than 70 percent of the country’s voters participated in the election, and the opposition made its gains despite a growing economy and heavy domination of the airwaves by the MPRP.
The close result “was shocking and surprising to some people,” the president said.
“But the choice of the people is the final decision, whether we are happy with the result or not,” he said.
Mr. Bagabandi said the evenly split parliament could prove politically useful.
“In my opinion, the choice of the people could help the parties to reach for consensus and learn to work together for the interests of the people,” he said. Given the almost equal balance of power, “the Mongolian people will learn a lot more about consensus-building” in the coming months.
The president said he hoped to increase U.S. direct investment and tourism in his country. His trip includes a stop in Denver, where he said he wants to meet with American firms about developing Mongolia’s mineral resources.
Mongolia under Mr. Bagabandi has won praise for managing the sometimes tricky relations with its two giant neighbors, Russia and China. The ongoing boom in China, the country’s largest trading partner, has helped fuel Mongolia’s recent growth, with gross domestic product up 5.5 percent last year.
The Mongolian president visited China just before his trip to Washington, saying Ulan Bator and Beijing now enjoyed “good neighborly relations.”
Reminded that old Chinese maps still show his country as part of China, Mr. Bagabandi smiled and noted that there still are old textbooks in his country that show Mongolia at the height of Genghis Khan’s empire stretching through Asia and into Europe.
“We don’t see any threat from China,” he said.
Mongolia also is interested in a peaceful resolution of the tense nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula.
The president said Mongolia supports a complete denuclearization of the peninsula, but added his country has kept diplomatic lines open to the secretive regime in North Korea.
“We do not think the world should try to isolate North Korea,” Mr. Bagabandi said.
“We believe it is important to engage North Korea in both regional and world developments. … We regard it as our duty to have good relations with both North and South Korea.”
Despite U.S. moves to reduce its troop levels in South Korea and review American military deployments worldwide, Mr. Bagabandi said there have been frequent high-level military contacts between U.S. and Mongolian officials.
“We do not have many concerns about the U.S. commitment to our region. Our main purpose is to increase the fruitful cooperation we now have on both sides,” he said.
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