Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

31 January 2003

NATO

• According to AP, Foreign Minister Yakis Friday called on NATO to rush to Turkey’s defense if it comes under attack during a possible Iraq conflict. “If the response is not given, then the credibility of the … Alliance will collapse,” Yakis reportedly told a news conference in Ankara. He was speaking after meeting with the foreign ministers of Greece and Italy to discuss the Iraqi crisis and Turkey’s bid to join the EU. A related AFP dispatch quotes Yakis stressing: “Turkey being a NATO ally would expect the other NATO countries to regard … an attack by Iraq … as an attack directed (against) other member countries and take any action they deem appropriate. If this is not done, the credibility and deterrence of the military alliance will come to zero.”

IRAQ

• AP reports Turkey’s National Security Council, which groups the country’s top military and civilian leaders, met Friday to discuss Washington’s request to base U.S. troops in Turkey to open a northern front against Iraq. According to the dispatch, the Cabinet is scheduled to meet later Friday, possibly to debate the Council’s recommendation. Any final approval would have to be granted by Parliament. The dispatch claims that military leaders are expected to warn the government that further delays in allowing in U.S. troops could hamper U.S. military planning and jeopardize Turkey’s warm ties with Washington. Earlier, Reuters quoted U.S. officials saying the United States has discussed a compromise with Ankara under which troops would be rotated through the country in relatively low numbers. The goal would be to keep the military’s presence as low as possible—around 15,000-20,000 troops at any one time—to avoid a backlash from Turks widely opposed to a war against Iraq. “The idea is you would be flowing people through so you don’t have huge numbers in Turkey at one time,” one U.S. official reportedly said. According to the dispatch, another said the arrangement was typical of other countries where Washington did not have basing rights. A third official reportedly called it a “revolving door” approach. The Washington Post reports meanwhile that U.S. troops in Germany that would form part of a northern front in a war against Iraq have received orders to pack up and prepare to head to Turkey. The newspaper quotes unidentified U.S. military officials saying nearly 2,000 troops from the lst Infantry Division in Germany were preparing to depart for Turkey. That deployment would largely involve headquarters staff, intelligence, communications and other support units—lead elements of a larger, armored force, the build of which will likely come from the 4th Infantry Division in Texas, the newspaper adds. In what it sees as another key signal that actual war against Iraq is rapidly approaching, the Philadelphia Inquirer asserts that America’s top battle commanders and their staffs are fighting an intense, high-tech simulated war against Iraq at Grafenwoehr, Germany. The highly classified exercise, dubbed Victory Scrimmage, began Tuesday and will run for a week. More than 3,000 personnel are participating in the computer-driven, command-post exercise. The war game’s designers create highly realistic models of both the terrain and the enemy in Iraq and permit the American commanders and their staff to engage the enemy in real time, says the article, adding: The chief war-fighting command being tested in Victory Scrimmage is the Army’s V Corps under Lt. Gen. Wallace. Military officials say that if the United States goes to war against Iraq, Gen. Walllace’s V Corps will have overall command of the heavy tank divisions that carry the fight to Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard tank divisions inside Iraq. According to the newspaper, a spokesman for V Corps headquarters confirmed that the “geographical footprint” for the exercise was southwest Asia, the region including Iraq. He said Gen. Wallace was the exercise director, and he was trying to replicate the environment in which operations would take place.

TERRORISM

• According to the BBC World Service, Italian police said Friday that 28 Pakistani terrorism suspects have been arrested in Naples. The Pakistanis, believed to part of a cell that was planning an attack, were reportedly found during a routing check on illegal immigrants Thursday. The suspects were reported to have had explosives and maps, including one of the town of Bagnoli, which houses AFSOUTH.

OTHER NEWS

• Reuters reports protesters bombarded French troops with stones at Abidjan airport Friday to try to stop the return to Ivory Coast of a new prime minister named under a French-brokered peace deal between government and rebels. The dispatch recalls that France has a force of more than 2,500 in Ivory Coast to protect its citizens and try to stop the crisis spiraling out of control. It adds that French troops deployed rapidly to the airport from their nearby base Friday. A related AFP dispatch quotes a French military spokesman saying a French soldier was seriously injured in the incident.