World Leaders Welcome President Bush’s Appeal for International Involvement

In his speech Sunday night, President Bush appealed to world leaders for greater financial and ground support in stabilizing Iraq, which he called “the central front” in the war on international terrorism.

Britain, the United States’ closest ally in the postwar operations in Iraq, announced Monday that two additional battalions of some 1,200 British troops will be sent to Iraq in the next few days.

British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said there was an “immediate requirement” for the extra deployment, and said additional specialist personnel and equipment will be sent to Britain’s area of operations in southern Iraq, around Basra.

The two battalions will join roughly 11,000 British soldiers based in southern Iraq.

“We are determined to help the Iraqi people to a new, peaceful and secure future for themselves and we will meet this commitment with appropriate forces in Iraq for as long as required and no longer,” Hoon said Monday.

While Britain stands out as the only foreign nation to dispatch additional ground troops, most world leaders praised Mr. Bush’s speech calling for nations to put aside their differences over Iraq and work toward greater international cooperation.

In France, European Affairs Minister Noelle Lenoir praised Mr. Bush’s appeal to the international community to set aside its differences as “unquestionably good news for us … as well as for Iraq and the Iraqi people.”

“What George Bush said overnight is an opening toward a fitting resolution in the U.N. Security Council,” wire reports quoted Lenoir as saying.

French diplomatic sources in Paris told Reuters that France would offer amendments Monday to the U.S.-drafted resolution, proposing a more substantial role for the United Nations in Iraq and a faster transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people.

In Berlin, Germany’s government spokesman Bela Anda said his country was considering several options, but maintained its position that Germany has “no plans for military engagement” in Iraq.

Anda said Germany has pledged $83 million in humanitarian aid for postwar Iraq — two-thirds from the Berlin government and the rest from the European Union.

Mr. Bush also called upon Congress to approve $87 billion in emergency spending for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan for the next fiscal year. The $87 billion request comes on top of the $79 billion defense supplemental funding Congress approved last spring for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

Republican and Democrat lawmakers Monday voiced support for the president’s $87 billion military spending request.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) expressed confidence that Congress would quickly pass the supplemental funding.

“We’ll expedite it aggressively,” Young told The Washington Post, adding that U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan were “running out of money.”

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he believed most Democrats would support the $87 billion request, while pointing out several problems in approving the massive spending bill.

“The conservatives are going to be very skittish, because this will bump the deficit to around $600 billion. And many of us are going to point out that we can’t afford to do this war the right way and have these massive tax cuts become permanent,” Biden said during an interview on NBC following Mr. Bush’s speech Sunday night.

The federal deficit is projected to hit $480 billion next year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Meanwhile, two U.S. soldiers were wounded near Baghdad after an explosion struck their patrol convoy Monday. A U.S. military spokesman said the explosives went off as the patrol convey was exiting a tunnel. Two Humvees were damaged and one of them overturned and caught fire, the military spokesman told the AP.

Since Mr. Bush announced the end of major combat operations on May 1, American and British troops have continued to come under guerrilla-like attacks on a nearly daily basis.