Refocused NATO will train forces for Iraq

ISTANBUL — NATO will agree today to train Iraqi security forces — maybe inside the country — during a summit clouded by a terrorist threat to behead three Turkish civilians kidnapped in Iraq.

President Bush, who has tried since the September 11 attacks to shape NATO into a quick-response army to fight global terrorism, is poised to get much of what he wants by the time the summit ends tomorrow.

“We have decided today to offer NATO’s assistance to the government of Iraq with the training of its security forces,” said a draft declaration urging member nations “to contribute to the training of the Iraqi armed forces.”

“We have asked the North Atlantic Council to develop on an urgent basis the modalities to implement this decision with the Iraqi interim government,” said the draft, according to Agence France-Presse.

This refocusing of the mission of an organization created to counter Soviet military aggression makes this week’s summit “historic,” a senior Bush administration official said.

“This is the first NATO summit that is dealing almost exclusively about NATO’s future role … things like Afghanistan and Iraq, NATO’s transformation” the official said. “That means NATO has already gotten its mind adjusted to its new challenges.

“That makes this summit historic, because the debate about what NATO is for is answered,” he said. “Now, we are discussing how to go about it.”

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer hinted at the deal yesterday by stressing the need for NATO to act decisively in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“If we do not tackle the problems where they emerge, they will end up on our doorstep,” Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said, mirroring Mr. Bush’s oft-repeated doctrine that the United States will battle terrorists as they gather in other countries rather than fight them on American streets.

The kidnapping of three Turkish contractors has helped focus the meeting of NATO’s 26 members on helping U.S. and Iraqi forces quell the violence and chaos created by terrorists, especially the network run by Abu Musab Zarqawi.

Zarqawi’s militants said in a statement aired on Al Jazeera television Saturday that the three would be beheaded within 72 hours unless Turks stopped working with U.S.-led forces in Iraq. Two more persons — a Pakistani driver and a U.S. Marine — were kidnapped in Iraq yesterday.

“Turkey has been fighting terrorist activity for more than 20 years,” Turkish Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul said. “They ask many things, they demand many things. We never consider them with seriousness.”

According to the administration official, Mr. Bush told Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in meetings yesterday that “this is a terrible situation” that highlights how terrorists in Iraq seek “to export chaos to the world, as well as chaos in Iraq.”

The senior Bush administration official also said that during the summit, NATO countries will agree to live up to earlier promises and send more military assistance, including troops, to Afghanistan.

Until now, he said, it has been difficult because few nations other than the United States can deploy and sustain significant numbers of troops.

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