Edited for brevity.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was paying a snap visit to Iraq, notably to meet leaders of a military training mission being set up by the alliance. "During his stay the secretary general is meeting with Iraqi officials, as well as commanders and members of the NATO training mission in Iraq," according to a short statement Friday by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO agreed to send a military training mission to Iraq in June, but struggled for several months to agree the details, notably due to a reluctance on the part of France and other anti-Iraq war countries to deploy troops inside Iraq. The 26-member alliance is now rushing to deploy up to 400 instructors in the country ahead of January elections. |