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R E G I O N: Rumsfeld praises Mongolia for Iraq, Afghan help

* US official says US training Mongolians to help them become a world-class peacekeeping force

ULAN BATOR: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Saturday praised the ‘political courage and personal courage’ of Mongolia and its troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On a brief stop in Ulan Bator, the third leg of a trip that also covered China and South Korea, Rumsfeld was feted by guards in ancient costume, treated to a throat-singing performance and presented with a wild horse as a gift from Defence Minister Tserenkhuu Sharavdorj.

“Your country has stepped up and joined a global coalition of countries in the war on terror,” he told a gathering of 180 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan in the Mongolian capital.

“You have contributed to significant improvement in the lives of the citizens of those two countries,” Rumsfeld said.

A country of 2.7 million people sandwiched between Russia and China, Mongolia has 131 soldiers in Iraq conducting security and medical work and about 15 troops in Afghanistan training local forces.

In February 2004, two Mongolian security troops guarding a Polish base in Hilla in south-central Iraq spotted a suspicious vehicle driving towards the camp and shot the driver dead, stopping what turned out to be a would-be suicide bomber.

Rumsfeld told the pair, Azziya and Sambuu-Yondon, that “to put your lives at risk on behalf of your fellow soldiers is admirable”.

With US funding and training, the Mongolian government built a peacekeeping force of 5,000 troops from its current force of 11,000 troops. When Mongolia was a satellite of the Soviet Union it had 70,000 troops.

“Located between Russia and China, they decided that their democracy, stability and future was mostly tied to the relationships they could create,” said a senior US defence official of Mongolia’s 10 year-old US security ties.

The official said that six US Marines and one US Army officer were posted in the country to train Mongolian forces to reach their long-term goal of becoming a world-class peacekeeping force.

“We would like Mongolia to be on the speed dial of the United Nations,” said the US official.

The United States has budgeted $18 million for 2005 to help train Mongolians for peacekeeping missions, the official said.

Rumsfeld, who cancelled plans to visit Mongolia’s neighbour Kazakhstan on Saturday, will fly to Lithuania for a NATO meeting on Ukraine. reuters

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