Posted on 05/22/2004 4:16:27 PM PDT by Pokey78
Tony Blair will call this week for a British-led Nato rapid reaction force to take control of the whole of southern Iraq.
In a move designed to bring greater cohesion to the military coalition, the Prime Minister will ask Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato secretary-general, for permission to deploy to Iraq the Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) headquarters.
The move will greatly enhance the Prime Minister's ability to influence coalition policy because, for the first time since the start of the war, Britain will have a strategic-level headquarters in Iraq.
Defence chiefs believe the deployment will aid stability in the country after the transfer of power to the Iraqis on July 1 and will speed up the eventual withdrawal of British forces.
It will also mean that Iraq will in effect be divided into two military zones: one in the north commanded by the US military, the other in the south commanded by the British.
Although the Nato secretary-general could theoretically veto the proposal, he is unlikely to do so because 60 per cent of the ARRC's personnel are British, including its commander, Lieutenant General Richard Dannatt.
The remainder come from a variety of countries, including Germany, the United States, Turkey, Greece and Spain.
The deployment will bring the cities of Najaf and Kut, scenes of heavy fighting, under British control for the first time since the war began.
Najaf, which contains Iraq's most important Shia shrine, is where Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shia cleric, has established a 3,000-strong militia force opposed to the occupation of Iraq.
The deployment will be Nato's first significant military involvement in Iraq, and the ARRC's first operation since the Kosovo crisis in 1999. The size of the force is estimated to consist of about 3,000 troops, most of whom will be British.
Because Blair knows the UN is crap.
Only if we kick France out of NATO first.
It is interesting the timing of everything that is going on, it seems like a real roll up. Note that Blair end runs the French both in the EU and the UN yet again. Clever lad.
France has not been a formal part of NATO since De Gaulle. They withdrew from the military part of the alliance decades ago.
For some reason I thought they had a part in keeping NATO out of Iraq during the initial part of the war?
resently commisoned Amphibious assault ship HMS- ALBION is all tanked up and ready to go,...
she is on her way to the east coast of America for an exercise known as Exercise Rapid Alliance which will be conducted on the US Marine Corps training areas in North Carolina.
For the first time the ship is carrying four Challenger II main battle tanks of the 1'st Royal Tank Regiment,..
But here's an idea,.. How about, instead of shooting 'DumDum's' at our alies in 'Trianing' excercises, Why not make a detour to Southern Iraq for some 'REAL' Action :) ,...
(I'm a PEACE Loveing guy realy!,... Honest, I am.)
You are right, they did.
France, Germany and Belguim were the cr*pweasels that stopped NATO from formally helping Turkey with patriot missile systems, etc.
Why France gets a say while contributing nothing is a mystery to me...
But Blair's idea is unlikely to succeed anyway, since Germany has been saying NO as well. ... the silver linining is the German wing of the Axis of Weasels has low poll numbers, so SPD may get defeated by CDP. This would be a reverse of the situation in Spain, where we lost an ally to a cr8pweasel socialist.
French air force and naval air forces, under NATO command, carried out bombing operations in Bosnia during 1994/95 and in Yugoslavia in 1999.
Tony Blair will call this week for a British-led Nato rapid reaction force to take control of the whole of southern Iraq.
This shouldn't come as a surprise. NATO has been an offensive alliance since its illegal invasion of Kosovo.
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