ISLAMABAD, 14 July 2004 — Hours after the appointment of its top diplomat as special representative of the United Nations secretary-general in Iraq, Pakistan yesterday said it had not taken a final decision to send its troops to Baghdad.
“Ashraf Jehangir Qazi’s appointment as special representative and dispatching troops to Iraq are separate matters,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan told reporters in Islamabad. He said the decision to send troops has different determinants. “Pakistan has so far not taken any decision in this regard,” Khan added.
The United States has been asking Pakistan to contribute peacekeeping troops to Iraq — a request turned down by Islamabad, saying it would send its troops only under a UN umbrella or that of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Widespread opposition against sending troops among Pakistan’s public had previously influenced the government’s decision not to get involved as it did not want to see the country as one of the “occupation forces”.
“The issue of sending troops is not in any way interlinked to Qazi’s new diplomatic assignment in Iraq,” spokesman Khan insisted.
Qazi, 62, was appointed on Monday to lead United Nations efforts to assist the transition to democracy in Iraq by organizing elections there by Jan. 31, 2005, for a transitional government and a legislative body. He was one of three final candidates that Annan was intensively considering. The others were high-ranking diplomats from India and Thailand.
Officials at the UN said Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has agreed to release Qazi from his duties in Washington within two weeks. He was selected by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to fill the post left vacant since August 2003, when Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 UN workers were killed by a massive bomb attack in Baghdad.
The attack prompted Annan to pull the United Nations from Iraq, and he has since been cautious to commit UN personnel to the country over security concerns despite US pressure.
The United States had also welcomed Qazi’s appointment. “It’s certainly, we think, an important development for the United Nations to have a special envoy of the secretary-general working on Iraq, and we’ll do everything possible to support his efforts,” a senior US administration official said in Washington.
Qazi and UN mission personnel will receive military protection from a unit within the US-led multinational force. That protective unit is being formed through consultations with governments that have been invited to contribute troops, one of those governments being Pakistan.
