Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

03 February 2003

WAR ON TERRORISM

• Italian police found a photograph of Britain’s most senior military man, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, in an apartment where they arrested 28 Pakistanis in a big anti-terror raid, judicial and police sources said on Saturday in Naples. Adm. Boyce is due to visit NATO’s installations in Naples around March 13, the sources added. The photo of Adm. Boyce, chief of the defence staff, was in a Pakistani newspaper and was ringed in ink, the sources said. A judicial source said the maps had targets marked on them including the headquarters of NATO’s southern European command on the city’s outskirts, the U.S. consulate in Naples and a U.S. Navy air base at Capodichino, outside the city. (Reuters 011733 GMT Feb 03)

IRAQ

• A 39-nation public opinion survey published on Friday found sentiment in favor of military action against Iraq strongest in the United States and Australia, while six in 10 in France and Russia and half in Germany opposed it under any circumstances. The polls were taken from Jan. 15 to 25 and so do not capture possible opinion shifts resulting from UN inspectors’ reports on Iraqi disarmament and President Bush’s State of the Union speech. Gallup International, an association of independent polling companies, conducted the surveys among 29,822 respondents by telephone and in person. (AP 010411 Feb 03)
  
  
• Italy’s defense minister, in an interview published Sunday, said he would rule out the possibility that U.S. forces might use tactical nuclear weapons in a war against Iraq and described as “very contained” the risk that an invasion of Iraq could destabilize neighboring countries or the Arab world. Asked about some media reports that the United States might use tactical nuclear arms against Iraq, Minister Antonio Martino was quoted by Milan daily Corriere della Sera as saying: “I would rule that out. The consequences, even in terms of image, would be very grave. And the image, even in this crisis, counts more than the substance.” (AP 021902 Feb 03)
  
  
• German intelligence officials believe Iraq has mobile labs that can be moved in trucks, a magazine reported on Sunday. The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service has briefed Berlin lawmakers “about the existence” of such labs, telling them that Iraq bought parts that could be used for the purpose from German companies, the Focus weekly said. (AP 011525 Feb 03)
  

NATO

• The U.S administration is considering relocating some troops based in Germany eastward to new NATO member Poland, Polish newspapers reported on Friday, quoting unnamed U.S. officials. But diplomats and Polish officials played down the reports in the country’s two leading dailies which ran ahead of a trip to the United States next week by Prime Minister Leszek Miller. Broadsheet Rzeczpospolita quoted one Bush administration source saying the matter was being discussed at the ministerial level and “is being taken increasingly seriously.” Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s best-selling daily, cited a Pentagon source saying it would be cheaper to station troops in Poland than in Germany. “We would be able to run bases in Poland far more cheaply and use old Soviet facilities. You have excellent training grounds -- and we shouldn’t forget the sympathy of the Polish people,” the source told Gazeta’s Washington correspondent. A Polish foreign ministry official said, however, he was not aware that any such plan was under discussion. “I heard about it on the radio today for the first time and I have to say it appears to be speculation,” Deputy Foreign Minister Adam Daniel Rotfeld told Radio Zet. (Reuters 311308 GMT Jan 03)

BALKANS

• The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo could be reduced by about half by the end of the year if security continues to improve, a spokesman for the force said Saturday in Pristina. “The way how Kosovo is progressing for the moment makes us believe that we do not need a soldier in every corner,” he told The Associated Press. (AP 011628 Feb 03)
  
  
• Serbia’s prime minister urged NATO on Saturday to allow the Serbian army and police to return to the southern province of Kosovo now under international rule, Belgrade’s Beta news agency reported. Zoran Djindjic’s appeal, in a letter sent to NATO’s supreme commander for southern Europe, U.S. Admiral Gregory Johnson, was in response to an announced reduction of NATO-led troops in Kosovo, he said. Djindjic voiced concern that local ethnic-Albanian authorities would end up in charge of security issues in the province. “We are not going to allow that to happen and we ask to talk about it,” he told reporters at celebrations marking the 13th anniversary of his Democratic Party. Djindjic said he would send more letters to international institutions to seek their aid in resolving the final status of Kosovo. (Reuters 012120 GMT Feb 03)
  
  
• Police have arrested three ethnic Albanian suspects in Kosovo as part of an investigation into a recent attack on a police station in the western part of the province, a UN police official said Sunday in Pristina. The suspects were arrested Saturday in a search operation conducted by UN police in two buildings in the town of Pec. The three were part of a group of six people initially taken into custody. However, after being questioned by the police, the others were released. Four firearms were also discovered during the search. (AP 021255 Feb 03)