US Commander points out Romania's contribution in Iraq

(Initially published in www.romania-report.ro - Feb 12, 2005; according to US DoD)


On Thursday, Commander Lt. Gen. David Patreaus provided a US DoD briefing on NATO Training Mission in Iraq and, among other, he mentioned Romania for its important equipment contributions.

Commander Lt. Gen. David Patreaus acts as the NATO Training Mission Iraq Commander and as the Multinational Security Transition Command, Iraq commander. " The NATO Training Mission in Iraq provides advisors and trainers who help in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. Three national command centers in Iraq and a joint headquarters. It has a small team at the Iraqi Military Academy which by the way graduated its first class on the 6th of January which was Army Day in Iraq and have now started the one year course" Patreaus said during the DoD briefing.

"There is a team that has already developed a curriculum for the staff colleges, led by Italy, which will start training instructors in April and start the courses in September and then there will be another element that will work on re-establishing Iraq's War College", the US Commander told the press.

"In addition to that there have been out of country training activities that have trained a couple of dozen already Iraqi officials, with many more of those lying ahead. There have been substantial equipment contributions as well including over 9,000 weapons that were put into the hands of Iraqi security forces in time for the elections and that proved very-very helpful indeed.

In fact those three contributions in particular came from Romania, Estonia and Denmark and there's an offer on the table from Hungary of over 70 T-72 tanks and other equipment and trainers. That's enough, obviously, almost to equip an armor brigade, general Patreaus said.

"So there's quite a bit of activity going on. But I also laid out for the ministers the need for the nations to provide the additional resources needed for the mission in terms of some additional trainers and also a budget for the infrastructure of the Training, Education and Doctrine Center and for in-country training."

Romania Report according to US Department of Defense