The United States wants to get NATO more involved in stabilizing post-war Iraq as the cost and toll on its own forces mounts, but any such a move faces political hurdles that may be unpalatable to Washington.

Diplomats say European allies led by France and Germany, which opposed the US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, want a wider mandate from the United Nations (UN), an invitation from a legitimate Iraqi body and a role independent of the US-British occupying authority as the price for coming to America's rescue, as they see it.

Fifty US soldiers have been killed since President George W. Bush declared an effective end to the war on May 1 and the roughly 146,000 US troops face daily guerrilla ambushes, especially in the so-called "Sunni triangle" of central Iraq.

Senior officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expect growing US pressure for the 19-nation NATO alliance, convalescing after a two-year crisis of relevance, to shoulder more of the peacekeeping burden.

But diplomats say the Bush administration is loath to share any political control - least of all with countries it regards as having betrayed it in the run-up to the war.

The Senate urged Bush in a non-binding resolution adopted by a 97-0 vote this month to consider a direct NATO role in Iraq.

So far, the alliance has agreed only to provide behind-the-scenes planning, communications and logistical support for a Polish-led force that is due to take over a central sector of the country in September.

But the United States is keen for NATO to do more, for example by taking responsibility for a geographical sector or a whole division of up to 20,000 troops.

Having NATO play a bigger role in Iraq would fit well with Secretary-General George Robertson's vision of a go-anywhere alliance "transformed" to face 21st-century security challenges after its lumbering Cold War structures were sidelined in the US response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The run-up to the Iraq War prompted the most severe crisis of recent years in NATO, and Washington initially invited only its supporters in what Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the "new Europe" to send troops to post-war Iraq.

The problem is that most are poor or Mediterranean allies with low defence budgets and few readily deployable top-line military units.

It took Poland two months to scrape together 9,200 soldiers, with the second-largest input after its own coming from Ukraine.

France and Germany have just the kind of forces needed in Iraq, but it clearly still riles Washington to ask for their help, especially given the likely political price.

"The general consensus is that the time is not yet right because there is no new UN Security Council resolution," a senior NATO official said. "If you had a resolution in the future, the betting is that these countries (France, Germany and Belgium) would support it."

Another tricky issue would be how a NATO force would co-ordinate with the US military command and the US-British Coalition Provisional Authority in charge of civilian affairs, since Washington has no intention of putting NATO in charge of the entire Iraq stabilization force. One possible model is the way NATO is gradually taking over command of the international peace force in Afghanistan after initially providing only low-profile planning assistance.

(China Daily August 1, 2003)