RIYADH, 12 February 2003 — The Kingdom said yesterday that joint GCC defense forces to be deployed in Kuwait will not take part in any attack against Iraq, should there be a fresh US-led war on Iraq.
“These forces will not take part in any military operation against Iraq,” Prince Khaled ibn Sultan, deputy minister of defense, told Okaz newspaper.
“The deployment of these troops in Kuwait, at this country’s behest, is aimed at protecting its territory” against Iraqi attack. “These forces will not undertake external missions,” Prince Khaled said.
The Peninsula Shield forces will come under the orders of the host country, he added.
Prince Khaled said that the departure of US forces stationed in Saudi Arabia was linked to the end of the “no-fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq imposed by London and Washington after the 1991 Gulf War.
“The presence of American, British and French forces in the Prince Sultan airbase in Al-Kharj was for a precise reason, that is ... the control of the southern exclusion zone.
“If that reason goes away, the presence of US and other forces will end,” he said.
Following a meeting of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) defense and foreign ministers on the Iraq crisis, Kuwait announced on Saturday that its partners had accepted its request for units to be deployed from their joint defense force.
The GCC members — Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — in 1986 created the common Peninsula Shield defense force which is now stationed at Hafr Al-Baten in northeastern Saudi Arabia.
The council for the past several years has studied the possibility of increasing the number of troops in the force from 5,000 to 22,000. It has conducted exercises but has never before been deployed.
In Kuwait, the country’s Defense Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak Al-Sabah said yesterday that Gulf troops are to start deploying in Kuwait in a few days.
He said troops from Bahrain and the UAE would be dispatched to Kuwait “in a few days to safeguard the country against any security repercussions that might be witnessed in the area in the near future,” KUNA news agency reported.
The minister also said the troops would arrive with Bahraini naval boats and Emirati Apache attack helicopters.
“Officials of the two countries expressed readiness to take part with their brothers in the Kuwaiti army,” the minister said.
“Kuwait has welcomed the participation of these troops on Kuwaiti soil,” he added.
The United States is threatening to disarm Iraq by force unless Baghdad agrees to give up the banned weapons of mass destruction which Washington says it possesses.
