WARSAW — Spain’s sudden announcement that it is pulling its troops out of Iraq left other members of the multinational force scrambling yesterday to develop a plan for keeping the peace in the increasingly dangerous country.
Poland, which commands the 23-nation force of 9,500 troops in south-central Iraq, said it was surprised by the announcement on Sunday that Spain, the third-largest contributor, will be withdrawing its 1,300 soldiers.
The Polish Defense Ministry said commanders are working on transferring “tasks from the Spaniards while maintaining the operational capability of the division and ensuring the safety” of the troops.
“It’s certainly a surprising decision,” Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski told the Rzeczpospolita daily. “We are all working intensively on several variants on how to make up for the leaving troops. Perhaps we will have to reorganize the division.”
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, sought to allay fears within the multinational force.
“Numerically, those are numbers that should be able to be replaced in fairly short order,” he said. “There will not be a security vacuum in that area at any time.”
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announced the pullout just hours after his government was sworn in, fulfilling a campaign promise.
Mr. Zapatero initially had pledged to remove the troops if the United Nations had not taken political and military control of the situation in Iraq by June 30. In his announcement to remove them earlier, he said he saw no sign that the situation would have changed sufficiently to satisfy Spain.
The news triggered criticism from some coalition members, such as Australia. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer worried that if other countries followed Madrid’s example, “then Iraq would be left without security and Iraq would become a haven for terrorists.”
Poland, which has committed 2,400 troops to the multinational force, said it will not be able to make up the difference caused by the Spanish pullout.
Albania yesterday volunteered to increase its military presence in Iraq, which at the moment is mostly symbolic, consisting of 71 noncombat troops patrolling the city of Mosul under U.S. command.
Slovakian President-elect Ivan Gasparovic, who once opposed deployment of his country’s soldiers to Iraq, said the threat of worldwide terrorism now justifies their presence. Slovakia has 105 troops in Iraq, most of them working on the removal of land mines.
“Would it be better to withdraw from Iraq and leave free hands to terrorism and leave defeated, or prevail and do everything possible to stop terrorism from spreading?” Mr. Gasparovic asked.
The multinational force is in control of a region that has been the center of recent intense fighting between coalition forces and followers of radical Shi’ite cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr.
Polish Gen. Mieczyslaw Bieniek, the commander of the multinational division, said the Spanish decision “does not affect the continuity of the division’s functioning.”
“The decision to withdraw the Spanish troops is a sovereign decision and must be respected,” he said. “But the pullout of the troops is a military operation, which needs time and planning.”
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