Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

27 January 2003

WAR ON TERRORISM

• German intelligence has warned that 20 Afghan extremists travelling on falsified Pakistani passports are en route to Europe, Germany’s mass-circulation Bild newspaper reported on Saturday. In a release issued ahead of publication, the daily cited unnamed intelligence sources as saying what the paper called “terror commandos” were traveling to Germany, Britain, France and the Czech Republic via Bahrain. The paper did not say what the extremists planned to do if they made it to Europe, but said they were followers of Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has denied reports that he is allied with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. (Reuters 250115 GMT Jan 03)

AFGHANISTAN

• Afghan intelligence officers said on Sunday they had foiled a plan to launch rocket attacks on the U.S. embassy, international peacekeepers and Kabul airport at the weekend. Engineer Amin, head of intelligence for Kabul, said that his men had found 30 BM-21 rockets in the Tara Khail area near Bagrami on the eastern outskirts of Kabul on Saturday morning. He said five were primed to fire while the rest lay ready nearby. Adding a map was found at the scene identifying the three targets. An ISAF patrol found 25 rockets on Saturday morning in an area about three km from the airport, adjacent to the road leading out of Kabul towards the eastern city of Jalalabad. (Reuters 261359 GTM Jan 03)

IRAQ

• The United Nations will lose all credibility if it does not act to disarm Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the leader of the NATO military alliance said Friday. NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson told a conference in London that the crisis over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction “strikes at the very credibility of multilateralism and the UN.” (AP 241745 Jan 03)
  
• The new NATO military commander met with Turkey’s top brass on Friday to discuss a possible war with Iraq, while the British military chief visited a key air base - the hub of British and U.S. warplanes enforcing the northern no-fly zone over Iraq. U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, who took over last week as NATO’s military chief, met with Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, the chief of staff of the Turkish military. A day earlier, the British military chief, Adm. Sir Michael Boyce, reportedly was rebuffed by Gen. Ozkok, when he relayed a British request to deploy forces in Turkey in the event of an Iraq war. “No to the British,” the daily Milliyet headlined on Friday, saying that the Turkish military refused to allow stationing of the British forces. A senior Turkish general, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said Turkey has no plans on further military cooperation with Britain outside of NATO. (AP 241328 Jan 03)
  
• The Turkish military has agreed to let up to 20,000 U.S. troops pass through the country into northern Iraq if there is a war, a newspaper report said on Sunday. The report said the agreement was between Turkish and U.S. military officials. Turkish military officials were not available to comment on the report. The Turkish Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment and a U.S. Embassy spokesman said he had no knowledge of such an agreement. According to a report published in the Milliyet newspaper, U.S. troops would not be stationed in Turkey, but would only pass through Turkey on their way to northern Iraq. (AP 261534 Jan 03)
  
• The construction of facilities at a Hungarian air base to house and train Iraqi volunteers to back U.S. forces in case of military action in Iraq was near completion, but the arrival of the trainees was not imminent, a U.S. Army spokeswoman said Saturday in Budapest. “We are prepared to receive the volunteer trainees but they are still being gathered and screened at marshaling centers,” said the spokeswoman, who asked not to be named. (AP 252116 Jan 03)
  

NATO

• Germany plans to cut drastically its force of tanks and armoured vehicles to help trim its defence budget of 24 billion euros a year (US $25.94 billion), Die Welt newspaper reported on Saturday. Citing unnamed sources, the paper said the number of Leopard 2 tanks would be reduced to about 400 and Marder tracked armoured vehicles from 2,000 to about 400. A Defence Ministry spokesman declined to comment on the report, but he did say the number of Leopard 2 tanks was already being reduced under existing plans from about 2,230 to 850, “independently from any structural changes needed in the future.” The cuts were expected to be announced at the end of a defence policy review ordered by the government last year, the newspaper said. It quoted Rainer Arnold, a defence expert for the ruling Social Democrats, as saying 350 heavy tanks would be the minimum Germany needed to fulfill its obligations to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. (Reuters 251548 GMT Jan 03)

BALKANS

• Despite warnings that Yugoslavia risks losing U.S. financial aid and international support, a Yugoslav minister indicated on Sunday that his government’s reluctance to arrest a top war crimes fugitive. In an interview with The Associated Press, Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic said there were “several problems involving the arrest” of the former Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, believed to be hiding in Serbia. “It is questionable whether our forces have the ability to arrest him (Mladic) without serious incidents,” Svilanovic said. “The question is - do we have adequate resources for that?” (AP 261348 Jan 03)
  
• Attackers fired machine guns and a rocket-propelled grenade early Sunday on the party office of a former ethnic Albanian rebel leader, Ali Ahmeti, damaging the building but causing no injuries, an official said. It was the fourth such attack on Ahmeti’s headquarters in Skopje’s neighborhood of Cair. Police suspected that a rival ethnic Albanian party was behind the attack. (AP 262028 Jan 03)