Washington sought NATO’s commitment to help train the Iraqi military. It made limited progress, however, due to opposition by Paris and Berlin to having NATO troops on the ground in Iraq.

Differences also flared up when U.S. president George Bush pressed for the European Union to admit Turkey into membership. French president Jacques Chirac objected strongly to U.S. “meddling” in European affairs.

Washington did win agreement at the summit to expand the size and scope of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan. It also registered progress in the ongoing restructuring of the armed forces under NATO’s command to be able to deploy troops rapidly around the world.

As the NATO meeting opened, the U.S.-run occupation regime in Baghdad transferred the government to an Iraqi cabinet headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who was chosen by the outgoing regime. The transfer was organized two days earlier than the previously announced June 30 date in order to coincide with the opening of the Istanbul meeting, an effort designed to influence the summit in Washington’s favor.

The NATO meeting was preceded by a European Union summit held near Dublin, Ireland, that was attended by U.S. president George Bush. In a joint statement, heads of state at the gathering pledged the support of the EU powers for a NATO role in training the Iraqi armed forces.

After the Dublin meeting, Bush flew to Istanbul for the NATO summit, which was attended by 26 government leaders. Among them were British prime minister Anthony Blair, French president Jacques Chirac, and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany.

In announcing their decision to train Iraqi forces, all the governments present—including the French and German officials, who have been critical of the U.S.-led war on Iraq—went through the charade of claiming they were simply responding to the request by a sovereign government in Iraq.

Washington had initially pushed for NATO to deploy troops in Iraq to take over command of the occupation forces currently run by the Polish government, and setting up a NATO command in Iraq.  
 
French and German objections
The French and German leaders, however, said they would only agree to NATO coordinating military training programs. They also argued for conducting the training outside Iraq, allegedly for security reasons.

Chirac and Schröder insisted there would be no French or German soldiers sent to Iraq. French officials argued that any NATO troops in Iraq would be too closely identified with the U.S. forces. “I do not think that it is NATO’s role to intervene in Iraq,” the French president said.

On the first day of the summit, U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld handed Bush a note from National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice informing Bush the transfer of state authority in Iraq had just been completed. “Let freedom reign!” wrote Bush on the note, during the meeting. Within hours, the exchange was splashed on the front pages of U.S. dailies and other media. The calculated move, however, did not do much toward accomplishing Washington’s goals at the summit.

The final agreement was very limited: to begin training Iraqi officers at military schools in Rome and Oberammergau, Germany.

Leading up to and during the war, Paris and Berlin were critical of the timing of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and its domination by U.S. forces, arguing for a larger role for the United Nations. The conflict reflected the competing interests between the different imperialist powers, with the French and German rulers worried that in a U.S.-led war they would lose their lucrative trade connections with Iraq and political influence in the Mideast.

In another sharp exchange reflecting the competing interests between Washington and Paris, Chirac criticized the U.S. president for backing the Turkish government’s bid to become a member of the European Union, which Paris opposes. Mentioning him by name, he said Bush “not only went too far but went into a domain which is not his own” by urging the EU to give Turkey a firm date to start entry talks.

Ankara has the second-largest military among NATO members, after Washington, and has sided largely with U.S. imperialism in world affairs.

In the end, the NATO leaders issued a joint statement offering “full cooperation to the new sovereign interim government as it seeks to strengthen internal security and prepare the way to national elections in 2005.”

Chirac said, “The return of sovereignty to Iraq is in our view a necessary condition.” The French rulers recognize that now they will have to deal with the new Iraqi administration if they are to regain trade relations and influence in that country, which they lost in the aftermath of the Anglo-American assault on Iraq.

At the Istanbul summit the 26 government leaders also agreed to expand the forces in Afghanistan under NATO’s command from 6,500 to 10,000 troops. The reinforced units, currently limited to the capital city of Kabul and the northern city of Kunduz, would be deployed to five other northern cities. The rationalization for deploying additional soldiers was that they would provide security for September elections.

In addition, the summit agreed to transfer control of the occupation of Bosnia from the NATO “peacekeeping” force of 7,500 troops to an equal-size European Union force by the end of the year, and to set up permanent NATO diplomatic missions in Central Asia and the Caucasus.  
 
Progress in transformation of NATO
The most important gains registered by Washington at the Istanbul meeting were the ongoing steps toward transforming NATO into a more agile military alliance that can respond rapidly around the world.

The day before the opening of the summit, Rumsfeld announced at a news briefing in Istanbul that the NATO Response Force was up and running. He said it might be deployed for the upcoming Olympics in Athens, Greece, or for the September elections in Afghanistan.

In addition, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer announced that the imperialist alliance’s new Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense Battalion, to be led by the Czech government, is now fully operational. The battalion, he said, is a “superb example of how NATO is transforming to deal with the new threats posed by weapons of mass destruction.”

Scheffer also announced the opening of a state-of-the-art training center in Poland by the Allied Command Transformation. Headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia. The command is in charge of “standardization, training, concept development, and experimentation,” according to the U.S. State Department.

Bush used his first trip to Turkey to strengthen relations with the government of that country, which had been strained during the imperialist war against Iraq. Last year, the Turkish parliament rejected a U.S. request to allow its troops to pass through the country for the invasion of Iraq in order to attack Baghdad from the north simultaneously with the southern invasion launched from Kuwait.

Bush took the occasion to praise the Turkish government as an “Islamic” country that meets with Washington’s approval.

The visit by the U.S. president and NATO representatives was met with a protest by about 40,000 people. The Turkish government sealed off sections of Istanbul, flew fighter planes overhead, and deployed 23,000 police in the city’s streets.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric whose Mahdi Army had clashed with occupation forces in April and May in southern and central Iraq, has now taken a conciliatory stance. In face of military blows by the U.S. occupiers and increasing political isolation, al-Sadr abandoned his insurgency. He condemned a wave of bombings in Iraq that took place leading up to the transfer of authority to the interim regime.

Al-Sadr has recognized the new U.S.-backed government and offered it military assistance. “The Mahdi Army is ready to cooperate actively and positively with honest elements among the Iraqi police and other patriotic forces, to partake in safeguarding government buildings and facilities, such as hospitals, electricity plants, water, fuel and oil refineries, and any other site that might be a target of terrorist attacks,” said an order from the Mahdi Army distributed in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, the Washington Post reported June 26.

Earlier, after al-Sadr called on his followers to lay down their arms, Bush announced that Washington would not object to the inclusion of the Shiite cleric in the interim government in Baghdad.  
 
 
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