Posted on 09/04/2003 5:13:58 AM PDT by Happy2BMe
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A Polish-led force took over a chunk of central Iraq from U.S. Marines on Wednesday as Washington sought to relieve the burden on its troops by widening international participation in Iraq's security.
The Marines, in charge of the area for several months, handed over control of a South-Central zone of Iraq to the Polish-led multinational force.
"I have absolute faith and confidence in the 21 nations that will assume their responsibilities today," Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, told a ceremony in an open air amphitheater in ancient Babylon.
With security deteriorating in the occupied country and U.S. soldiers dying nearly every day, President Bush took steps to bring in the United Nations to share the burden of stabilizing and running Iraq.
In Baghdad, 25 ministers were sworn in and were set to get down to work in what the U.S.-led administration says is another step toward handing the reins of power back to Iraqis.
A senior U.S. official said in Washington on Tuesday night that Bush had directed Secretary of State Colin Powell to open negotiations at the U.N. Security Council on a resolution aimed at building a wider multinational force and getting U.N. help to build political stability.
"We've got language (of a draft U.N. resolution). It enhances, it elaborates, it talks about how countries can contribute," a State Department official said.
"It's on how to define further the vital role of the U.N. in political, military and economic areas and how to provide ways for the U.N. members to support efforts by the Iraqi people."
U.N. envoys said the draft might include a role for the United Nations in helping to prepare elections in Iraq.
U.S. AUTHORITY
The United States, whose forces have occupied Iraq since invading in March and toppling President Saddam Hussein, has insisted it retain authority over Iraq operations.
Washington has about 150,000 troops in Iraq and is supported by about 21,000 others, 11,000 of them British.
A wider U.N. role would also make it easier to gain reconstruction funds during a forthcoming donors conference, with many contributors uneasy at the occupation.
The deteriorating security has put the brakes on any prospects of foreign investment leading to a quick recovery of the Iraqi economy.
Iraq has the second-largest proven oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia, but efforts to get the industry powering an economic recovery have been plagued by looting and sabotage.
A car bombing in Iraq on Tuesday, the fourth in under a month, targeted Baghdad's police headquarters killing one policeman and wounding 15.
Similar bombings have shattered the Jordanian embassy and the U.N. headquarters and claimed the life of a top Shi'ite Muslim cleric and scores of his followers.
Before the four bombings, violence had been largely grenade and gun attacks that Washington blamed on die-hard Saddam supporters. Since then U.S. officials have made increasing mention of al Qaeda and other foreign fighters.
"I think it is true that Iraq now faces an important terrorist threat," Iraq's U.S. governor Paul Bremer, a counter-terrorism expert, told a news conference in Baghdad.
Sixty-seven U.S. and 11 British soldiers have been killed in attacks since Bush declared major combat over on May 1.
Five U.S. soldiers were wounded on Tuesday in two separate attacks with explosives in the area of Tikrit north of Baghdad, a U.S. military spokesman.
Iraq's U.S.-backed Governing Council appointed the cabinet of 25 ministers on Monday. The ministers will formulate policy with the Governing Council and the occupying authorities and will be responsible for the day-to-day running of their departments.
Ultimate power remains with Bremer until general elections.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Gray in Babylon)
Now, they are better allies than even nations bordering our country - Canada and Mexico (to whom we provide billion$ worth of trade each year).
It's a strange world.
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We should pull all of our bases out of Bosnia and Germany and relocate some of them to Poland.
Not a bad idea. I'm sure the Russians would not like it, but it's a very good idea. Other nations make lots of money off of US bases, I would rather see it goto somebody like Poland.
What's a few million dead Poles, right?
How ironic it is now that the dust from the Cold War has settled that the former communist bloc nation of Poland is now one of our most dedicated allies!
Compare the Polish dedication to freedom and fighting terrosism and anarch to that of what Germany and France are doing now.
German Chancellor Schroeder would lose votes if we did that - come on, get REAL!
The German Bundeswehr's participation in the US presumable war against Iraq is ruled out, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in his address on the German TV.
According to Schroeder, too many German servicemen have already been involved in various international peace-making operations in other countries.
Meanwhile Colonel Bernhard Gertz, the Chairman of the German Union of the Bundeswehr Serviceman, told the Bild newspaper that he doesn't rule out the participation of German soldiers in a "limited operation" against Iraq, for instance, to liquidate laboratories producing weapons of mass destruction.
(And I really mean it.)
Hah! Is "drunken mummies" a word-for-word translation of a common Polish insult? I've never heard the phrase before, but it sure fits.
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