Bangladesh Division Ruled Out

Bangladesh Division Ruled Out

Bangladesh told US Secretary of State Colin Powell that it would not send troops to Iraq, only peace-keepers. Moreover, it would only send peace-keepers if an elected government of Iraq asked Bangladesh for them. Since there is unlikely to be an elected government of Iraq until early 2005 at the earliest, this stance seems to me to rule out a Bangladeshi division for the US. The US has sought a division each from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Turkey. Only the Turkish division seems at all likely to come, and its advent is controversial because the interim Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, has said Iraq doesn’t want troops from neighboring countries for fear of complications. The US is likely to be stuck having at least 100,000 troops in Iraq for the next year or two at least. Reference below