NATO Carefully Backs Iraq Stance

NATO carefully gave its support behind the United Nations resolution calling on Iraq to disarm, but stopped short of saying it would join the United States and Great Britain in a military invasion.

The 19 NATO members pledged to “take effective action to assist and support the efforts of the U.N. to ensure full and immediate compliance by Iraq,” according to the statement. Division remained over what should occur following the Dec. 8 deadline the resolution gives Saddam Hussein to inventory his weapons of mass destruction.

US President George W. Bush stopped short of asking NATO nations to support a war with Iraq during his speech at the opening of the summit in Prague on Thursday. But officials told reporters yesterday that the White House has asked more than 50 countries, including Germany, what it would be willing to do should the US and UK invade Iraq.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on Thursday repeated the German line that the country’s military would not participate in an invasion. But the foreign minister and a chancellor spokesman did issue a joint statement saying the country would provide air space and the use of military bases in Germany to the US and Great Britain.

New nations will join in 2004

NATO leaders showed more resolve in welcoming the seven new nations, all former communist eastern European nations, into the 53-year-old alliance. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Rumania will join NATO in 2004. The new nations follow the membership of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in 1999.

“By welcoming seven members, we will not only add to our military capabilities, we will refresh the spirti of this great democratic alliance,” Bush said in his opening speech.

The comment touches on the main theme of this year’s summit. Burdened by criticism that its usefulness expired with the end of the Cold War, NATO is searching for ways in which to reinvent itself.

More effective military

The United States and Great Britain emphasize that the way to do that is by re-hauling its military structures and modernizing its equipment in order to better fight the terrorism.

NATO members agreed and on Thursday approved a US-pushed plan to create a 20,000-strong European-led fighting force able to deploy anywhere in the world within a matter of days.

The force would take some of the military burden off the United States and allow Europe to solve problems, like the Bosnian war in the early 1990s, more effectively.