Former US aides suggest NATO troops in NIraq

BRUSSELS, Nov 20 (Reuters) Two former senior US officials suggested today deploying NATO forces in northern Iraq to forestall the risk of a Turkish invasion.

In a policy paper issued before a summit of the 26-nation alliance in Riga next week, Richard Holbrooke and Ronald Asmus said NATO members had an interest in doing everything possible to maintain Iraq's unity and prevent a full-scale civil war.

''Already today in Turkey there are voices openly calling for an invasion of northern Iraq to deal with the constant raids into southeastern Turkey by the terrorist organisation known as the PKK,'' they wrote in a study published by the German Marshall Fund transatlantic think-tank.

''The best way to reduce that risk would be for NATO to deploy troops to northern Iraq.'' Holbrooke served as US ambassador to the United Nations and Asmus was deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs in the Clinton administration.

Such a deployment seems highly unlikely in view of the deep rifts in transatlantic relations caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which have prevented NATO doing more than small-scale military training in Baghdad.

''This has neither been discussed nor considered formally or informally in NATO,'' NATO spokesman James Appathurai said.

France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg opposed any NATO support for the invasion and have since resisted moves to involve the alliance more deeply.

Holbrooke and Asmus contend that a NATO presence as part of a deal with the Iraqi Kurdish regional leadership to rein in Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas would help prevent Turkish military intervention.

CONTAIN SPILLOVER ''NATO troops could help contain the spillover of an Iraqi civil war and its spread to the part of Iraq that is still peaceful, stable and quasi-democratic,'' they argued.

The two senior Democrats said NATO was condemned to ''a slow but certain descent into marginalisation and irrelevance'' unless it became involved in the major security challenges of the day.

With the exception of its peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, which is struggling to obtain sufficient forces and flexible deployment, NATO was barely present in the key hotspots in an arc of crisis stretching from north Africa to Pakistan.

They said NATO might be needed in Lebanon if European peacekeeping forces deployed after last summer's fighting between Israel and Hizbollah fighters got into trouble.

They also said the alliance should expand political and military cooperation with Israel and Gulf Arab states to help prepare for the risk of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

REUTERS SP ND2314