U.S. troop roles to be widened?
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is willing to send a small number of U.S. combat troops to Pakistan to help fight the insurgency there if Pakistani authorities ask for such help, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.
"We remain ready, willing and able to assist the Pakistanis and to partner with them to provide additional training, to conduct joint operations, should they desire to do so," Gates told a news conference.
Gates said the Pakistani government has not requested any additional assistance in the weeks since al-Qaida and affiliated extremists have intensified their fighting inside Pakistan. And he stressed the U.S. would respect the Pakistanis' judgment on the utility of American military assistance.
Also, the White House sought Thursday to defuse congressional opposition to its plans to negotiate a long-term agreement with Iraq on the presence of U.S. forces, contending it would not tie the hands of the next president.
Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, told reporters the agreement would not stipulate how many troops should stay, dictate operations or establish permanent bases in Iraq.
Instead, the plan would be a "status of forces agreement," which would outline the legal basis for the U.S. presence, Casey said. For example, the agreement might stipulate that U.S. troops are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice instead of Iraqi courts. It also might arrange for the duty-free shipment of materials to U.S. forces, he said.
"This is certainly not an effort to tie anyone's hands," Casey said. "This is very much an effort to provide current and future policymakers with the full range of options available to them."
The administration's plan has drawn fire in recent weeks from Democratic presidential candidates, who say it could bind the next president to a commitment to keep troops in Iraq.
"We're not aware of any proposals that the Pakistanis have made to us at this point," he said. "This is clearly an evolving issue. And what we have tried to communicate to the Pakistanis and essentially what we are saying here is we are prepared to look at a range of cooperation with them in a number of different areas, but at this point it's their nickel, and we await proposals or suggestions from them."
Gates made his remarks not as an announcement but in response to questions from reporters at a regularly scheduled news conference in which he also declined to say whether U.S. combat troops have previously crossed the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan to conduct combat operations.
The question of a U.S. troop presence in Pakistan is highly sensitive, although at times senior U.S. officials have acknowledged various arrangements. In an Associated Press interview in January 2002, for example, Gen. Tommy Franks, who headed the U.S. Central Command at the time, disclosed a deal with Pakistan allowing U.S. troops in Afghanistan to cross the border in pursuit of fugitive extremist leaders.
Gates said Pakistani authorities were understandably taking their time in deciding whether to request more military assistance from the United States. He noted the assassination in Dec. 27 of former prime minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and subsequent fears of increased unrest.
"I think that the emergence of this fairly considerable security challenge in Pakistan has really been brought home to the Pakistani government relatively recently and particularly with the tragic assassination of Mrs. Bhutto," Gates said. "So I think it's not particularly surprising that they have not fully thought through exactly how they intend to proceed and their strategy going forward."
The United States has about 28,000 troops in neighboring Afghanistan, and Gates earlier this month ordered another 3,200 to go this spring to train Afghan forces and to help fight Taliban insurgents.
U.S. intelligence believes al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan.
The top American commander in the region, Navy Adm. William J. Fallon, was in Pakistan earlier this week meeting with senior Pakistani officials, including the new army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani. Last week Fallon told reporters that Pakistani officials were more willing to seek U.S. assistance.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who appeared at the news conference with Gates, said he did not know whether Fallon had offered or received any new proposals.
Most of the discussion with the Pakistanis thus far has focused on the possibility of U.S. troops being used to train Pakistani forces, Gates said, but he acknowledged that combat operations might also be included.
"You're not talking about significant numbers of U.S. troops for the kinds of things if you're talking about going after al-Qaida in the border area or something like that," Gates said. "So, in my way of thinking, we're talking about a very small number of troops, should that happen. And it's clearly a pretty remote area. But, again, the Pakistani government has to be the judge of this."
Asked more specifically what he meant by a "very small number" of U.S. troops, Gates declined to comment.
Mullen said talks with the Pakistanis are progressing and that the U.S. military stands ready to provide training or combat forces.
"If asked to assist, I think we could do a lot," Mullen said.
For several years the focus of U.S. concern about al-Qaida elements in Pakistan was their support for Taliban extremists who have received training in western Pakistan and then infiltrated into Afghanistan to foment violence. More recently, al-Qaida in Pakistan has posed more of a threat to the Pakistani government, seeking to destabilize the government of a nuclear-armed Muslim nation.
At his news conference, Gates said the concern about al-Qaida goes beyond its threat to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"We are all concerned about the reestablishment of al-Qaida safe havens in the border area," he said. "I think it would be unrealistic to assume that all of the planning that they're doing is focused strictly on Pakistan. So I think that that is a continuing threat to Europe as well as to us."
------
On the Net:
Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil
{BC-US-Iraq, 1st Ld-Writethru,600}
{Bush administration tries to defuse opposition to long-term pact} with Iraq on U.S. presence
{Eds: SUBS 3rd graf to CORRECTS name to Uniform Code of Military} Justice.
{By ANNE FLAHERTY}=
{Associated Press Writer}=
In a recent presidential debate, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said she was committed to trying to get all U.S. troops out of Iraq within a year if elected. However, she added that she didn't know what the next president might "inherit" from Bush.
"There is a big problem looming on the horizon that we had better pay attention to, and that is President Bush is intent upon negotiating a long-term agreement with Iraq which would have permanent bases, permanent troop presence," she said. "And he claims he does not need to come to the United States Congress to get permission; he only needs to go to the Iraqi parliament."
When asked whether the agreement would create permanent bases, Casey said it would not.
"That's been a clear matter of policy for some time," he said.
Casey also said the agreement would not be a commitment of forces "in terms of numbers or operations."
"Those are obviously things that are determined by the military commanders and ultimately by the president," he added.
Still, the agreement has raised red flags among Clinton's colleagues, including Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Joseph Biden of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and is guaranteed to become a major issue this election year as Democrats struggle to challenge Bush on the war. Repeated votes to bring troops home have failed because Democrats lack the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.
Biden, who recently dropped out of the presidential race, said he is concerned the agreement would include a commitment to protect Iraq from foreign aggression.
"As a matter of constitutional law, and based on over 200 years of practice, I believe that such an agreement would require congressional authorization," Biden wrote in a Dec. 19, 2007, letter to the president.
Biden told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference Thursday that he wanted to get more details on the administration's plans before pursuing efforts to block it. He said his committee has no immediate plans to review a legislative proposal by Clinton that would subject any U.S. agreement with Iraq to two-thirds approval by the Senate.