Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

31 January 2003

• Slovenians will vote on March 23 in a double referendum on joining NATO and the EU as part of an expansion of the two organisations due in 2004, parliament said on Thursday. Slovenia will be the first of seven candidates for NATO membership to hold a referendum on the issue. Latest polls in the tiny Alpine state of two million people that declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 show 44 percent would vote for NATO membership with 39 percent against it and the rest undecided. “We will have to explain to people that (membership in NATO) is a long-term strategic interest in Slovenia,” President Janez Drnovsek told national radio. The latest poll on EU membership showed support of 65 percent with 18 percent against and the rest undecided. All Slovenia's main political parties strongly back membership in the EU and NATO.(Reuters 1918 300103 GMT)

IRAQ

• President Bush, pressing a diplomatic drive to disarm Iraq, was meeting on Friday with British Prime Minister Blair, his staunchest ally in a divided Europe wary of rushing to war with Baghdad. Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said on Thursday there was no evidence to suggest the Iraqis were granting inspectors greater access to key scientists they want to interview regarding Iraq's alleged arms programs. Blair arrived in Washington late on Thursday night for Friday’s Camp David talks. They have been dubbed by some a “war council,” but analysts believe Blair will neither endorse immediate military action nor bring Bush back from the brink. Rather, he is expected broadly to back Bush’s hawkish stance against Saddam while also urging caution over timing and further patience for now with the UN approach. Bush met on Thursday with Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, who together with Blair and leaders of six other European countries published a statement in newspapers expressing support for Washington’s tough stance on Iraq.(Reuters 0355 310103 GMT)

AFGHANISTAN

• Four U.S. soldiers were killed when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed during a training mission in eastern Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. The cause was being investigated. It was the deadliest day for the American military in Afghanistan since March 4, 2002, when seven soldiers were killed and 11 wounded at the outset of an offensive against Taliban and al-Qaida remnant forces. The Black Hawk, with two pilots and two crew members aboard, crashed Thursday several miles (kilometers) east of Bagram air base in an area known as the East Training Range, said Jim Wilkinson, director of strategic communications at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida. Wilkinson said there were no indications of hostile fire. He said it appeared to be an accident but no other details were available.(AP 310131 Jan 03 GMT)

OTHER NEWS

• The British government confirmed on Friday it had released evidence it says proves Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network tried to develop a nuclear weapon in the late 1990s. “The evidence speaks for itself,” a Foreign Office spokesman said when asked to comment on a report by the BBC, which said the government had shown it documents proving al Qaeda tried to build a so-called dirty bomb. “It provides proof of substantial earlier expert opinion that al Qaeda was interested in developing and using nuclear weapons," the spokesman told Reuters. In its main television news bulletin on Thursday night, The BBC said the government had provided it with previously undisclosed material on al Qaeda operations, gathered by intelligence agents in Afghanistan. The agents infiltrated al Qaeda training camps in the late 1990s and reported back to London that bin Laden had acquired radioactive isotopes, the BBC said. It cited British officials saying al Qaeda tried to develop a dirty bomb at a nuclear laboratory in the Afghan city of Herat. The documents included al Qaeda training manuals which detail how to use dirty bombs to maximum effect. The Foreign Office declined to comment on the details of the report or on why the government had decided to provide the BBC with the information.(Reuters 0235 310103 GMT)