BRUSSELS (AFP) — Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki urged NATO on Thursday to provide more equipment and training to aid his troops in their war against extremists.
"We feel there is a need for more efforts in equipping and training," Maliki said during an unprecedented visit by an Iraqi premier to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation headquarters.
"We are requesting the enhancing of the activities of the NATO mission in Iraq to enable it to lead more tasks and allow us to reach self-sufficiency," he added.
Maliki stressed that "we did not come here to request extra troops" during his visit to NATO.
The Iraqi leader said he was awaiting a visit to Baghdad from a NATO delegation "with new ideas".
A NATO diplomat said the Iraqi delegation had "asked for help in the areas of border control and anti-terrorist activities," as well as aviation and naval training.
Maliki's "timely visit is the start of a new era in the relationship between NATO and Iraq," said his host NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
However the NATO chief stressed that the Alliance "is not going to replace the (US-led) coalition forces in Iraq," but would rather enlarge their existing training mission.
He noted that NATO had recently enlarged its mission, under Italian command, to train Iraq's armed police.
Despite serious misgivings among some NATO member states about the military action in Iraq, NATO has since 2004 been involved in theoretical training of Iraqi military officers and, since last year, the gendarmes.
Some 170 NATO experts are currently working at the national defence college in Baghdad and at other institutions around the Iraqi capital as part of a mission which was recently extended through 2009.
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