The US general advising Iraq's armed forces joined NATO envoys yesterday in an attempt to resolve long disputes over the scale of the alliance's contribution to the Iraq operation.
Lieutenant General David Petraeus met ambassadors from 26 nations who are finalizing plans for NATO to run an academy for Iraqi officers outside Baghdad, which officials want operational by January.
Diplomats said they were optimistic consensus would be found on a "concept of operations" approved overnight by military experts that would deploy about 300 NATO instructors to Iraq.
After overcoming French concerns, NATO agreed last month on the outline of the plan, but differences have emerged over how many NATO troops will be needed to protect them.
NATO's top commander, US General James Jones, has argued that up to 3,000 troops could be needed, although he has acknowledged the figure could be much lower.
France has bristled at the prospects of sending thousands of NATO troops and insists the training mission keep a low profile.
The envoys are seeking to define how US-led coalition troops already in Iraq would protect the NATO instructors, and then to decide how many new NATO guards would also be needed.
Petraeus will command the NATO troops, reporting back to allied headquarters, as well as running the much wider US-led program to build up the Iraqi regime's forces to around 250,000.
Not all NATO allies will contribute to the mission in Iraq. France, Belgium, Germany and Spain have said any training they offer Iraqi forces will be outside the country.
NATO diplomats have played down the significance of differences and rejected parallels with the crisis at NATO in early 2003, when France, Germany and Belgium opposed the war in Iraq.
Despite insisting that it would prefer any NATO training to be kept outside Iraq, Paris lifted its objections to an alliance mission in July.
It allowed about 40 NATO instructors to deploy to Iraq in August and agreed to the expanded mission last month.
Although many NATO nations have sent soldiers to Iraq, objections from France and Germany had previously prevented the alliance from taking any collective role there, apart from offering logistical support to a Polish-led multinational force of 6,000 troops operating in the center of the country.
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