Danes get ready to flee Iraq

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen speaking at his weekly press conference on Tuesday said the situation in Iraq was 'unsatisfactory' although the goal (?) remains the same..

Calling the situation in Iraq 'unsatisfactory', Rasmussen suggested a change of course for the country's participation in the military coalition which Mogens LyketoftLeader of the opposition Social Democrat Party (SD) said at the time of the spring parliamentary elections last year, in a TV debate ...

“I am in favour of the withdrawal of our contingent at the end of its mandate at the beginning of June (2005) since we cannot continue to take part in something that many Iraqi’s consider to be an army of occupation,”… “Denmark will never take part in a war against Iraq that the Secretary General of the UN qualified as illegal. We shall never commit the same error that Anders Fogh Rasmussen committed by entering a war without the UN’s mandate and thereby breaking up European cohesion. We shall not follow the USA blindly as the present government has done. We shall be a critical ally,”

Denmark has had 500 hundred troops stationed in Basra since the early phase of the occupation, which Parliament agreed to extend their mandate to remain there until summer 2007, as public support for Danish involvement and continued presence has waned. (Yes! Their Parliament get to vote on the issue!)

The Danish State and it's people have also been heavily criticised world wide about the publication of deliberately offensive anti-Muslim cartoons - see pic of sacking of the Danish Embassy in Teheran in February 2006 - some Danish companies have also lost a huge amount of sales / profits in the Middle East and Indonesia. Ambassadors in Iran , Syria and Indonesia were recalled.

Rasmussen, shadow boxed on the shape of Denmark's military presence , which he said could take on "a new form" before an actual withdrawal.

'We can be there, but in a more retracted position (?), from which we assist the Iraqi government in situations where it is especially necessary.'

WTF ?

He said any development of a new strategy in Iraq should build on a dialogue with the coalition partners and repeated a call for an international conference that would explore how best reforms can be carried out in Iraq.

Part of the dialogue with the Coalition has included the decision on August 30th 2005 when the Central Intelligence Agency were told that they can no longer use Danish airspace for flights to transport suspected terrorists around the world. Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller said the Danish government has told the United States that it is opposed to the unauthorized flights.

Møller had originally denied that the government had knowledge of transports taking place in Danish airspace that violate “international conventions.”

All this sounds like .... how can we slip through the door in Iraq marked exit as gracefully as possible ?