BRUSSELS, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- European Commission foreign chief Benita Ferrero-Waldner Wednesday ruled out sending an EU electoral monitoring mission to Iraq in December.
The former Austrian foreign minister said she had hoped to send election monitors to Baghdad to make sure a December poll runs smoothly. But she told members of the European Parliament that continuing security concerns made this impossible.
Ferrero-Waldner stressed that European troops would remain in Iraq for the near future after several EU lawmakers pushed for an early exit strategy. She gained support from Lord Brent, a British junior minister speaking on behalf of the EU presidency.
"The Iraqi government recently said that the immediate withdrawal of troops would be a catastrophe for democracy in Iraq," he told the Strasbourg-based assembly.
The debate on the situation in Iraq came a day after the Pentagon admitted to having used phosphorous in an attack on terrorist insurgents in Fallujah. The chemical substance is banned under the Geneva convention, which the United States has not signed.
Members of the center-left and liberal groups in the parliament said the bloc's member states should pull out as there was no way of guaranteeing the United States would not breach human rights. "Coalition forces may actually be fueling the fires of insurgency," said Graham Watson, the leader of the Liberal grouping in the EU assembly. "Evidence of serious human rights violations, including torture and the systematic use of arbitrary arrest, have badly damaged the coalition's standing and helped recruit many more to the insurgents'cause."
