Military

AFGHANISTAN

• Albania sent 30 hand-picked soldiers to Afghanistan on Monday to help keep the peace, and said it hoped their performance would boost the country's hopes of one day joining the NATO military alliance. Army chief-of-staff General Major Pellumb Qazimi urged the soldiers taking part in the country’s first peacekeeping mission outside the Balkans to set an example and show that Albania deserves to be part of international peace efforts. "What you do there will set new standards for (Albania’s) integration in the Euro-Atlantic alliance (NATO)," he told them as they prepared to leave from Tirana airport. The NATO defense alliance is expected to invite several ex-communist east European countries to a summit in Prague in November.(Reuters 1242 050802 Aug 02 GMT)

BALKANS

• The Yugoslav government has persuaded the UN war crimes tribunal to hear parts of the testimony of a key witness in Slobodan Milosevic’s trial behind closed doors, a government official said Monday. Belgrade had demanded protective measures for "certain segments" in the upcoming testimony of Zoran Lilic, a former Yugoslav president, arguing he could disclose information that may endanger the security of the country, said a Foreign Ministry official, Vladimir Djeric. "The tribunal recognized Yugoslavia’s need to protect its national interests," Djeric said, adding the government had been concerned about the "sensitive nature" of state and military secrets to which Lilic had access while in office in the 1990s.(AP 051258 Aug 02 GMT)

• U.S. fighter jets on Monday attacked an air defense command and control facility in southern Iraq in response to attempts to shoot down American and British warplanes patrolling the area, the U.S. military said. The U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, and officials at the Pentagon said Monday’s attack occurred at about 9 a.m. Iraqi time (0600 GMT, 2 a.m. EDT) against a command and control site 120 miles (190 km) southwest of Baghdad. All aircraft left the area safely and damage to the target was being assessed, according to the command.(Reuters 1402 050802 Aug 02 GMT)

• President Bush on Monday reviewed the Pentagon’s latest scenario for attacking Iraq with the general who oversaw the war in Afghanistan and with other key advisers at the White House. There was no indication, however, that a final decision on how Bush will follow through on his goal of "regime change" in Baghdad was imminent. Gen. Tommy Franks has been refining the Pentagon’s strategy and offering updates to the National Security Council over the past few weeks. U.S. Administration officials said that would not. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld stressed the difficulty of locating Iraq’s weapons caches since some are underground and others mobile. "I can’t think of anything funnier than a handful of congressmen walking around. They’d have to be there for the next 50 years trying to find something. It’s a joke," he said in an interview with a group of journalists.(AP 052235 Aug 02 GMT)

OTHER NEWS

• The Pentagon wants U.S. forces to get special training in manhunts so they can nab al-Qaida Operatives, including Osama bin Laden, who continue to elude them, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said on Monday. In an interview, Rumsfeld said he wants military training re-focused on "the kinds of things that would better enable us to do the task at hand. And that is to help track down terrorists and terrorist networks, and deal with countries that harbor terrorists." Rumsfeld did not reveal specifics Monday, but said the campaign in Afghanistan is now more of a manhunt than a traditional military operation and he wants the skills of U.S. forces brought in line with that duty. "Our department was not organized, trained and equipped to do manhunts. We were organized, trained and equipped to deal with armies, navies and air forces," who now are not really the main threat, Rumsfeld said. "What we do face are a set of capabilities and technologies and weapons of mass destruction that can cause enormous carnage in our country, and to our forces and friends and allies around the world," Rumsfeld said. "To deal with that, you really have to organize, train and equip to address those kinds of capabilities, instead of just continuing what we were doing at the turn of the century."(AP 052252 Aug 02 GMT)

FINAL ITEM