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NATO Secretary-General George Robertson made clear in Brussels Wednesday that NATO as a whole will not play a direct role in post-war Iraq despite calls from the United States for the alliance to send troops to stabilize Iraq.
The US Senate voted 97-0 last week for a non-binding resolution, calling on President George W. Bush to "consider formally and expeditiously" a deployment of NATO forces to Iraq where US casualties and costs are climbing.
Robertson said he had contacted some US senators since then to make it "perfectly clear" that NATO had committed itself to behind-the-scenes support for a Polish-led stabilization force in Iraq and wanted to make that a success before anything else.
"No formal approach has been made about NATO doing more than that largely because that is a fairly major commitment in itself," he told a press briefing after meeting with Abdullah Abdullah, foreign minister of Afghan interim government, at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
(Xinhua News Agency July 17, 2003)
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