Powell urges allies to stay firm on Iraq

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From combined dispatches

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell appealed yesterday for allied nations with troops in Iraq to consider sending more soldiers or to extend the service of those already there beyond June 30, when the country is scheduled to return to self-rule.

Mr. Powell told RTL News of the Netherlands that he was confident that the United Nations will approve a resolution on Iraq's political future in the 10 weeks before the turnover date. Many allies say they need the resolution to provide political cover for staying in Iraq.

Many consider the 135,000-strong U.S. contingent in Iraq stretched thin by the unrest there, and the administration has pushed hard for more foreign forces to ease the burden. But winning new commitments -- and keeping up the force levels of troops already there -- has proven difficult.

The Bush administration has approved the outline of a plan negotiated by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, for a caretaker government to take over in Baghdad on July 1, Mr. Powell said.

"We are just now beginning to draft the elements of a resolution," Mr. Powell said. "And it's linked, of course, to the plan that Ambassador Brahimi ... brought back."

Once the plan is approved, "we can start to work with our friends in the Security Council to develop and get passed a new U.N. resolution," Mr. Powell said.

Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic have announced plans to pull their forces out of the U.S.-led military mission in Iraq, even as insurgents step up attacks on coalition and Iraqi targets. Talking to press outlets from El Salvador, the Netherlands and Norway, Mr. Powell yesterday attempted to prevent further defections.

"We hope there will be more troop contributors after there is a new U.N. resolution and after sovereignty has been returned to the Iraqi people," he said.

But the Norwegian government, a NATO ally, rejected Mr. Powell's appeal almost immediately, saying it will stick to plans to withdraw its 180 troops in Iraq at the end of June to concentrate on the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.

"We must follow our original plan, of a commitment until the summer," Foreign Minister Jan Petersen said, denying that heightened violence in Iraq had been a factor in the decision. "We must contribute so that NATO does not fail in Afghanistan."

In Spain, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who opposed the war, told a Madrid daily in an interview published yesterday that he decided this week to accelerate the withdrawal of his country's 1,300 troops from Iraq to June 1 after becoming convinced that the United States would never agree to put its forces under U.N. control.

A parliamentary committee in Bulgaria yesterday decided to keep its 485 troops in Iraq despite attacks this week on its base near Karbala in the south that killed a Bulgarian soldier and wounded about a dozen people.

Mr. Powell urged the Dutch government to keep its 1,300 peacekeeping troops in Iraq, but he added that each government in the coalition must make its own decision.

Mr. Powell, talking to El Salvador's La Prensa Grafica, praised San Salvador for not following the lead of its Honduran and Dominican neighbors in pulling out troops and for recommitting to having its 374 soldiers stay in Iraq at least through June 30.

"I hope that El Salvador will be able to keep troops longer, but the commitment they made was through the end of June and I'm pleased that they're going to meet that commitment," he said.

"Some of our friends in the region have decided they had to bring their troops home, and I'm pleased that El Salvador decided that, 'No, we will stay and we will meet our commitment,'" Mr. Powell added.