VIENNA, Nov 18 (AFP) - NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said here Thursday the alliance was "alive and kicking" in spite of certain members' refusal to commit officers to take part in a NATO training mission in Iraq, "NATO is not terminally ill. NATO is alive and kicking," De Hoop Scheffer told journalists after a meeting with Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik.
On Wednesday in Brussels NATO ambassadors adopted an "operation plan" for an Iraq mission which foresees the despatch of 200 to 300 military instructors to that country.
But sources said some members, notably Germany, was holding out against letting its NATO staff officers take part in the mission, infuriating the NATO chief.
The alliance's supreme military commander, US General James Jones, recently said that about a dozen of NATO's 26 member states do not want to take part in the training mission.
"The mission remains a priority for NATO. NATO will play a very important role in Iraq," de Hoop Scheffer said here.
NATO leaders agreed at a June summit in Istanbul to help train Iraqi security forces, but their ambassadors battled for months to agree on the details before giving the political green light this week.
The alliance aims to get most of the instructors to Iraq in time for the country's January elections.
During a visit to NATO headquarters earlier this month, Iraq's interim prime minister Iyad Allawi urged the military alliance to rush its training officers into the country, warning that any delay "could cost lives".
Under the newly agreed operation plan, the instructors would train about 1,000 Iraqi officers a year at a military academy near Baghdad. De Hoop Scheffer hopes to have the mission up and running by the end of the year.
11/18/2004 13:52 GMT - AFP