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ISAF

• British marines hunting down hostile forces in Afghanistan’s harsh mountains face a long, hard slog but defence analysts expect limited casualties. The Defence Ministry said on Tuesday marines of the elite 45 Commando had launched a sweep of a valley in the southeast of Afghanistan in search of Taliban and al Qaeda forces codenamed "Operation Ptarmigan." "The concern is not so much overall casualties, but the length of any operation," said Clifford Beal, editor of the London-based Jane’s Defence Weekly. "It’s clearly open-ended and predicated on the ability of Taliban and al Qaeda to sustain guerrilla operations. Assuming they have lines of supply within Pakistan, it is conceivable they could maintain those operations for months, if not longer." (Reuters 161722 GMT Apr 02)

NATO

• NATO Secretary General George Robertson unveiled plans on Tuesday to bolster the alliance’s military muscle to meet post-September 11 security challenges and prevent Washington’s might pushing Europe to the sidelines. Lord Robertson said a NATO summit in Prague in November would finalise a revamped version of the Defence Capabilities Initiative (DCI), launched in 1999 to deal with shortfalls highlighted by the conflict in Kosovo. "A number of European countries felt seriously ashamed that they wanted to participate in the war in Afghanistan but couldn’t get the troops to where the trouble was," he told the Reuters news agency in an interview at NATO’s Brussels headquarters. Lord Robertson dismissed the debate on NATO’s relevance, saying he was too busy to get into "academic descriptionism." But he said NATO’s European allies and Canada faced a stark choice between modernisation or marginalisation. "We cannot afford to have a two-tier alliance where the Americans do the high-tech, high-in-the sky activity and the Europeans fight in the mud and clear up the mess afterwards," he added. (Reuters 161605 GMT Apr 02)

• The Pentagon is making the biggest changes in decades to its master plan for assigning war-fighting responsibilities at home and around the world, officials said. The redesign, expected to be announced Wednesday by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, is meant to reflect a stronger emphasis on defense of the United States in light of the Sept. 11 attacks. The changes, which were discussed at a White House meeting of senior national security aides on Tuesday, are to take effect Oct. 1. European Command, based at Stuttgart, Germany, will take responsibility for a portion of the North Atlantic that Joint Forces Command had held. The European Command commander, Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, will become responsible for managing military-to-military relations with Russia. That currently is the job of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. Ralston is expected to step down this fall, and President Bush is expected to nominate Marine Corps Gen. James Jones as his successor. European Command will remain in charge of all U.S. forces in Europe, as well as parts of Africa and the Middle East. The Caspian Sea will be added to its area of responsibility. (AP 170314 Apr 02)

• NATO should be strengthened to defend its 19 member states against terrorism and biological and chemical weapons, senior U.S. and Turkish officials said Tuesday. "These are the new threats," U.S. Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman told reporters in Ankara, where he met with his Turkish counterpart Ugur Ziyal. (AP 161745 Apr 02)

• NATO and Russia will sign an accord boosting relations between the Western military alliance and Moscow on May 28 in Rome, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Tuesday in Rome. "With this act, the Cold War is really finished because the Russian federation is getting married to the West," Berlusconi told reporters at the premier’s office. (AP 162002 Apr 02)

• The Canadian government’s auditor-general warned on Tuesday that the Canadian military was so understaffed in key occupations like engineers and weapons technicians that it was hard to deploy troops. "Any shortages in just a few skills can mean that a ship may have to deploy without enough people or enough fully trained people, or that it may not be able to deploy at all," the auditor-general’s office said in a report. The document also pointed to a growing danger of cyber attacks on government information systems and urged faster work to guard against such strikes. The document acknowledged efforts to keep personnel and improve recruitment, but said these were insufficient. (Reuters 161930 GMT Apr 02)

BALKANS

• The head of a NATO delegation urged Bosnia on Tuesday to work harder at organizing its military to comply with European standards in order to be eligible for membership in the alliance’s Partnership for Peace program. Rafael Estrella, the president of an assembly comprised of NATO-member nations, traveled to Sarajevo to discuss efforts to have Bosnia join the alliance outreach program. (AP 161534 Apr 02)
• Bosnian Muslims who lost loved ones in the Srebrenica massacre said on Tuesday the Dutch Government’s resignation over the 1995 slaughter was too little, too late. They urged legal action against Dutch nationals responsible for the failure of their peacekeeping contingent to prevent the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Serb forces, widely seen as Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two. Bosnia’s Foreign Ministry described the Dutch cabinet’s move as an "act of morality" which should spur a thorough look at the international community’s role during the country’s 1992-95 war. (Reuters 161755 GMT Apr 02)

• Britain’s defense minister on Tuesday praised efforts by Macedonian (sic) authorities to achieve a lasting peace after last year’s insurgency pitting ethnic Albanian militants against government forces. In talks with top officials, Defense Secretary Geoffrey Hoon said Britain and Macedonia (sic) enjoy a "very good relationship." Vlado Popovski, his Macedonian (sic) counterpart said the mood between majority Macedonians (sic) and minority ethnic Albanians is "positive, against any idea of renewed conflict." But Popovski underlined security concerns in the wake of recent outbreaks of violence between rival ethnic Albanian groups. (AP 161625 Apr 02)

• Bosnia has filed terrorism and espionage charges against three former secret service officials linked to a guerrilla training camp in 1995, a senior government source said on Tuesday. Bosnian media reported that the new charges related to the training of Bosnian Muslim intelligence officials at the camp by an Iranian security service in 1995, while war was still raging. According to reports, the three are accused of forging documents to provide new identities for camp trainees, and stopping proceedings against 11 people detained in the raid. Media also reported that SFOR handed over documents to the Interior Ministry last month that it seized in the 1996 raid. The senior government source said the reports were accurate. (Reuters 161654 GMT Apr 02)

 FINAL ITEM