US embassy cable - 03ZAGREB1266

C O N F I D E N T I A L  ZAGREB 001266 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
STATE FOR EUR (BOGUE) 
DEFENSE FOR OSD/DASD-EURASIA (RICARDEL) 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/05/2013 
TAGS: MARR, PARM, PREL, MOPS, HR, IQ 
SUBJECT: CROATIA CONSIDERING OFFERING TROOPS TO IRAQ 
 
Classified By: Poloff A.F.Godfrey for reasons 1.5 (b,d) 
 
Summary 
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1.  (C) Croatia is actively considering contributing forces 
to support Phase IV operations in Iraq.  The idea of 
contributing a small number of military police to deploy as 
part of a multi-national unit has been broached with the 
Embassy informally several times, including with the 
Ambassador by Foreign Minister Picula, but a formal offer has 
not yet been made.  GoC officials seek a wide range of 
details in order to budget and plan for a possible deployment 
so they can brief the Cabinet and Parliament on the political 
and financial costs of a commitment of forces.  On June 4, we 
informed the GoC that, before the USG will engage in initial 
military-to-military discussions, PM Racan's cabinet must 
make a formal political commitment of its intent to join the 
coalition.  Before we can enter a more detailed discussion of 
operational plans, Croatia's parliament must approve the 
deployment of forces to Iraq, whereby Croatia would join the 
Coalition.  GoC officials expressed some frustration at 
having to make a commitment to deploy forces without details 
about cost and without assurances that Croatia's offer would 
be accepted, but were confident they could secure a Cabinet 
commitment solid enough to begin initial discussions.  End 
Summary. 
 
2.  (C) In the run-up to military operations to liberate 
Iraq, Croatia's political leaders were sharply and publicly 
negative in their response to U.S. requests to join the 
coalition.  While this approach may have won mild praise from 
some EU members at the time, senior GoC officials hope that 
offering to deploy troops to Iraq will help repair the damage 
they caused to the U.S.-Croatia bilateral relationship.  The 
GoC is exploring the possibility of deploying a small number 
of military police to Iraq as part of a multinational unit. 
While there has been no formal GoC decision to deploy, the 
idea of a Croatian contribution has been floated publicly and 
privately at all levels, including in the press on May 30 by 
PM Racan and by FM Picula on May 29 with the Ambassador. 
 
3.  (C) Croatian Defense Ministry policymakers and planners 
have engaged with us to try to determine what the modalities 
and costs of Croatia's so-far hypothetical deployment would 
be.  But until the GoC has made a more formal commitment to 
deploy forces to Iraq and thereby join the coalition, Croatia 
will not have access to detailed operational plans.  After 
consultations between DATT and experts at CENTCOM and 
USEUCOM, we prepared for the GoC a sequence of events which 
Croatia must follow as it prepares to deploy troops to Iraq. 
 
4.  (C) On June 4, Defense Attache and Poloff met first with 
Assistant Minister of Defense (Policy) Jelena Grcic Polic and 
then with MFA North America Department Head Miroslav Kovacic 
to explain how Croatia should proceed as it prepares to offer 
a contingent of troops to deploy in Iraq.  We made clear that 
until there has been a formal political commitment by the 
GoC, the USG will not fully engage with military planners. 
Assistant DefMin Grcic Polic said that this put her planners 
in a tough spot; until they had precise information, they 
would not have the projected cost details needed to draft the 
decision for the Cabinet to approve.  We explained that the 
initial policy decision by the Cabinet need not be a detailed 
document intended for approval by the parliament, but rather 
a formal declaration by Croatia's political leaders that 
Croatia seeks to deploy troops to Iraq to support Coalition 
efforts.  Grcic Polic was relieved, and speculated that a 
Cabinet "Determination" (rather than a formal "Decision") 
should be relatively easy to push through the Croatian 
bureaucracy. 
 
5.  (C) We explained that once the GoC makes the initial 
political decision to deploy, the U.S. could authorize 
military-to-military technical discussions, including a 
meeting at CENTCOM Headquarters with Croatian planners. 
These initial discussions should produce enough information 
about whether Croatia's offering meets the needs of the 
coalition and about the details and projected costs of a 
deployment for the GoC to take a more formal "Decision" to 
deploy and then forward that decision to Parliament for 
 
approval (required by Croatian law before troops can deploy 
abroad).  Once the Croatian Parliament approve the decision, 
Croatia would be considered a member of the Coalition and 
would therefore receive access to operational plans.  Then, 
detailed discussions about modalities and timing of 
deployment would begin, followed by, eventually, deployment 
of Croatia's troops to Iraq. 
 
6.  (C) At the MFA, Kovacic asked whether, before the GoC 
exposes itself to the political risk of making an offer of 
troops for Iraq, we could give assurances that Croatia's 
offer of military police would be accepted.  We replied that 
we could make no such assurances, but expressed our hope that 
we could soon count Croatia as a member of the coalition. 
 
Comment 
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7.  (C) The GoC leadership seems genuinely eager to make this 
deployment a reality, but we will insist on a firm political 
commitment before engaging in serious discussions.  Such a 
political commitment to deploy should not be difficult to get 
through the Cabinet, and a formal decision should, if 
properly managed, pass the parliament.  Once this political 
commitment is made, however, we are not certain that the unit 
Croatia will propose will offers will measure up in military 
terms.  We do not underestimate how difficult a task it is 
for the GoC to deploy troops overseas; this is only the 
second time they have done it (the first time was to ISAF in 
January 2003), and the first time was a bureaucratic 
disaster.  The financial burden of even the small deployment 
of MP's to ISAF was difficult for the MoD budget to swallow. 
Given the decline in the bilateral relationship due to a 
number of GoC actions, the decision to deploy a small unit to 
Iraq should not be taken as more than it is: an effort at 
self-serving damage control. 
ROSSIN 
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