Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

3 February 2003

SHAPE

• Belgium’s De Morgen, Feb. 2, reported that Belgium’s Interior Minister Duquesne and Defense Minister Flahaut Friday signed a protocol agreement that defines the Defense Ministry’s support to the integrated police. According to the newspaper, the ministers announced that in the framework of a test project, police would receive support from the army for the protection of SHAPE.

NATO

• Based on remarks by a Polish Navy spokesman, Warsaw’s PAP and France’s AFP report that NATO Monday started military exercises in the Baltic Sea involving the German, Polish, Spanish and U.S. Navy. “The NATO ships will train anti-submarine and anti-aircraft tactics together with Polish naval and airborne units in protecting maritime routes against submarine and air attacks. They will also practice peacekeeping missions and operations in extreme conditions,” PAP quotes the spokesman saying.
  
  
• According to AFP, the head of Norway’s parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee told Oslo’s public radio Monday NATO should send troops to the Middle East to act as a barrier between Israelis and Palestinians. “There is a need for a real, strong military force. NATO should consider the possibility of shouldering such a mission,” Thorbjoern Jagland reportedly said. Jagland, a former member of the U.S.-led Mitchell committee which proposed a blueprint for peace in the Middle East, suggested that a NATO force could be deployed between Israel and a newly-created Palestinian state to prevent attacks from either side.
  
  
• The arrest of 28 Pakistanis in connection with the finding in an apartment in Italy of explosives and NATO maps continues to generate prominent interest.
  The Independent, Feb. 1, highlighted that the arrests appear to be the biggest breakthrough yet in Europe in the fight against fundamentalist terrorists.
  The Daily Telegraph writes that there were signs Sunday that Italian police were backtracking on claims that the 28 suspects were part of an Al Qaeda plot to bomb headquarters AFSOUTH during a visit by Britain’s Chief of Defense Staff, Adm. Sir Michael Boyce. The article also quotes Defense Ministry sources in London saying Adm. Boyce was expected to continue with plans for his visit. It was unlikely that he would alter his plans whatever the truth of the case.
  

IRAQ

• Reuters reports the Turkish government said Monday it would seek Parliament’s authority this week for military measures ahead of any Iraq war. “We are on the one hand working for peace, we are still undertaking very important endeavors. But on the other hand, it is undoubtedly the government’s duty to protect Turkey’s interests … against the worst case scenario,” the dispatch quotes Prime Minister Gul saying in a news conference. According to the dispatch, he did not explicitly say what measures he sought but referred to a constitutional article which gives Parliament the authority to approve the stationing of foreign forces on Turkish soil or the dispatch of Turkish troops abroad. He also indicated that because of a nine-day religious holiday starting next week, “we will apply to Parliament this week.” The Washington Post, Feb. 1, reported that Turkey’s National Security Council called on Parliament Saturday to allow the United States to station troops in the country for a possible war against Iraq, but made its recommendation contingent on “international legitimacy.” The dispatch suggested that as a result, the Bush administration seemed to have moved an important step forward in its quest to organize a northern front against Iraq from Turkey, but was left without the green light it has been seeking from the Turkish government. In a two-page statement issued after a meeting, the Council was reportedly vague on the crucial question of timing, urging the government to call a vote “according to a calendar to be determined by monitoring developments.”
  
  
• According to AP, the U.S. Army announced Monday that a group of Iraqis opposed to Saddam Hussein had began training at the Taszar air base for support roles in the event the United States takes military action in Iraq. A few dozen volunteers had reportedly arrived at the base.
  
  
• The chief UN weapons inspectors said Sunday they expected to travel to Iraq next week for a last-ditch effort at a peaceful solution on the assumption that Iraq agrees to the requirements set out in a recent letter, reports the Financial Times. The newspaper observes that if inspectors return empty-handed from Baghdad, the next report to the UN Security Council on Feb. 14 would facilitate the U.S. and British search for a Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force. It stresses, however, that evidence of better cooperation could stiffen resistance to military action among Security Council members such as France, Russia and China and undermine the prospects for a new UN resolution.
  
  
• Media continue to focus on last week’s joint declaration of support with the United States in its campaign to disarm Saddam Hussein by eight European states.
  The real message from “the rebellious eight” was the group’s success in exposing as a near-empty shell a German-French effort to turn European governments against the United States on a war-and-peace issue, writes the International Herald Tribune. The daily speculates that coming on the heels of eight EU partners’ making clear they would not accept France and Germany as a self-imposed leadership tandem for Europe, Chancellor Schroeder’s massive defeat in provincial election Sunday now may well tear apart German-French resistance on Iraq. The tandem has dramatically lost legitimacy, the daily argues. It quotes retired German Gen. Naumann, a former Chairman NAMILCOM, saying the eight’s declaration was “a reaction against Paris and Berlin’s trying to pin the others to their own pre-decided positions.” This attempt, he reportedly suggested, resulted in the “worst blow ever suffered by the common foreign and security policy in Europe.”
  In a contribution to the Financial Times, Feb. 2, Anatol Lieven, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, opined that it may be time to admit that there will never in fact be a common European foreign and security policy. “Long before the crisis over Iraq erupted, momentum toward the creation of such a policy was quietly ebbing away. Now the EU not only is split down the middle on the most important issue of the day but will also, on present form, find itself in the same quandary every time there is a serious possibility of a fundamental breach with the U.S,” Lieven wrote and concluded: For a long time to come, if the EU is to have a security policy at all, it will have to be modest and, above all, confined to the continent of Europe and its fringes.
  

ESDP

• Britain and France hope to unveil ambitious defense plans for Europe when Prime Minister and President Chirac hold their summit on Tuesday in the French coastal resort of Le Touquet, reported the Financial Times, Feb. 1. According to the newspaper, the proposals will focus on military capabilities, flexibility in defense decision-making in the EU and a “solidarity clause” for any member state threatened by a terrorist attack. They include a push to improve capabilities through establishing an inter-governmental defense procurement agency. The newspaper noted that this would lead to more cooperation and coordination among member states, enabling equipment and personnel to be more interoperable in the field. Diplomats were quoted saying the proposals could signal a big push for ESDP.

BALKANS

• The Independent, Feb. 1, carried an exclusive interview with High Representative Paddy Ashdown in which he made an outspoken attack on NATO’s failure to arrest Radovan Karadzic. In what the newspaper describes as his first public criticism of NATO’s policing of the Balkans, Ashdown reportedly said: “This guy (Karadzic) has been running around the hills for seven years and we haven’t caught him…. You sit around under the tree that the poisoned fruit is hanging on and hope for the lucky break, that it falls off and that we are in the right place to catch it.” The newspaper claimed that during talks with NATO last week, Lord Ashdown appealed for a more active policy, with a special unit and more resources devoted to capturing Karadzic.