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NATO

• NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said in a magazine interview released Saturday that he has no knowledge of any U.S. plans to launch a military campaign against Iraq, though urged the alliance to watch Iraq closely for any signs it is supporting terrorist groups. President Bush fueled speculation that Iraq could be the United States’ next target in its war on terrorism last month, when he described Iraq, Iran and North Korea as forming an "axis of evil." In an interview with German news weekly Der Spiegel, Robertson said he didn’t know if the United States would attack Iraq. "I have no special knowledge," he was quoted as saying. Robertson also repeated his call for European NATO members, some of which have warned against U.S. unilateralism in smashing terrorist groups, to raise their military spending or risk being marginalized further.(AP 231401 Feb 02 GMT)

• NATO’s 19 full members and its 27 partners wound up a two-day meeting in Warsaw Saturday called to discuss ways to strengthen their cooperation in the fight against terrorism. The closed-door conference brought together about 100 officials from countries of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, a forum for political and security consultation. Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Adam Rotfeld, said in closing remarks to the participants that countries had to dispense with the traditional distinction between internal end external threats in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. "What we need is a radically new understanding and new organization of our security," Rotfeld said, according to a text of his remarks, calling for a coordinated drive to eliminate terrorism. "Either we do it united, or we will perish", Rotfeld said. Daniel Speckhard, NATO’s deputy assistant secretary-general, said the conference discussed areas such as intelligence exchange, civil emergency plans and countering the spread of weapons of mass destruction.(AP 231717 Feb 02 GMT)

• NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson praised Lithuania on Friday for "outstanding Progress" in meeting alliance membership criteria but stopped short of promising it would be invited to join this year. "Lithuania is on the right road, but you are not at the destination yet," he said after meeting Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus in Vilnius. "I don't come here with any guarantees, but I come with the message of encouragement: much has been done, much still needs to be done," Robertson said. He said Lithuania needed to "stay focused" on modernizing its army.(AP 221436 Feb 02 GMT)

• Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and Macedonia (sic) all must continue reforms before they can enter NATO, a U.S. diplomat said on Friday. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, visited Macedonia (sic) Friday as part of a tour of the nine Central and Eastern European countries hoping to join the military alliance. Though the United States supports NATO expansion, it has not yet decided which candidates to support, Burns told reporters after meeting with Macedonian (sic) President Boris Trajkovski and other top officials. Burns said the candidate countries he has visited so far Macedonia (sic), Bulgaria, Romania and Albania needed to demonstrate "commitment to democracy, economic reforms, rule of law," before they could join the alliance. Burns noted that the situation in the country has improved vastly compared to the fighting last summer and dismissed recent claims that the fighting could start again this spring. "There will no understanding, tolerance or acceptance for violence which have no grounds or excuse," he said. "We are optimistic that there will not be renewal of violence this spring."(AP 221828 Feb 02 GMT)

• Serbia’s prime minister Zoran Djindjic said in an interview released Saturday that he won't order police to track down war crimes suspect Gen. Ratko Mladic for extradition to an international court because it could spark a civil war. With many Serbians expressing sympathy for Milosevic, Djindjic told the German news weekly Der Spiegel that it would be too risky to send police to try to arrest Mladic. "What if a civil war breaks out? We have 200,000 Bosnian refugees in Serbia, many of them armed. The price is too high," he was quoted as saying. He said Mladic was protected by a 100-strong bodyguard, but didn’t indicate his whereabouts. Instead, he urged Mladic and Karadzic to turn themselves over to the court. Djindjic said the Dutch court, whose televised proceedings have been followed avidly in Serbia, had given Milosevic a high-profile podium to blame NATO for stoking the conflict and that the tribunal had lost "all credibility in our population."(AP 231715 Feb 02 GMT)

AFGHANISTAN

• German special forces are helping U.S. troops hunt down members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida organization in Afghanistan, Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping said in a newspaper interview released Sunday. The German troops "are being put into action together with soldiers of our allies," Scharping was quoted as saying by Bild newspaper. The soldiers have been in Afghanistan for several weeks, searching for suspects and "uncovering terrorist dangers and structures," Scharping said, though he declined to give further details, saying it could endanger the troops and their missions. According to Sunday’s Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, between 80 and 100 members of the Commando Special Forces unit are helping their U.S. and British counterparts to locate al-Qaida hide-outs in the Afghan mountains. (AP 241754 Feb 02 GMT)

• Already stretched by its commitment in Afghanistan, the U.S. military nonetheless is ready to act if President Bush decides to use force against Iraq, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday. "The United States military is ready for anything our commander in chief asks us to do. And that's precisely the point, this is a decision the president would make. And he has, of course, not made that decision at this point," Gen. Myers said on ABC television. He acknowledged that the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan has used many Joint Direct Attack Munitions, which turn conventional bombs into satellite-guided warheads, and that "we didn’t have a lot of these on hand" when the military action began in October. Should Bush order the use of force against Iraq, Myers said, "We may not have all the preferred munitions, in terms of JDAMs, that you would want, but we have other munitions we can substitute." Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said the military is "rapidly replenishing" its supplies to a higher level than before the Sept. 11 attacks. "You can be sure that the United States is not going to engage in something we’re not capable of engaging in," Rumsfeld said on NBC television when asked if the country was prepared today for a strong military operation against Iraq. But he also answered, "I didn’t say that," to a question about whether it could take some time for the military to get ready.(AP 241953 Feb 02 GMT)

 FINAL ITEM