Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

18 February 2003

IRAQ

• Turkey’s government is facing a diplomatic standoff with the United States, refusing to commit to let in U.S. soldiers for an Iraq operation as Washington’s patience is running thin. Prime Minister Abdullah Gul didn’t told reporters in Brussels when parliament would take up the vote. Some reports have said that a vote could come on Thursday. However, Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat, a top official in Gul’s party, said Monday it would be “difficult” for the proposal to come to parliament this week, the Anatolia news agency reported. “If by the end of this week they don’t do it, we are talking about a massive crisis with Washington, massive damage to the relationship,” said Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. (AP 180008 Feb 03)
  
  
• European Union leaders sought to patch up a deep rift over Iraq by agreeing force should only be used as a last resort, but their emergency summit failed to end deep differences over the prospect of war. France and Germany continue to oppose any imminent military action against Baghdad. At the summit Monday, French President Jacques Chirac signaled he would use his veto on the UN Security Council to block a resolution authorizing war. “There is no need for a second resolution today, which France would have no choice but to oppose,” said President Chirac. Their joint declaration was a balancing act between the two sides. However in language likely to please Washington, they acknowledged “inspections cannot continue indefinitely in the absence of full Iraqi cooperation.” The EU statement also stressed that “war is not inevitable.” (AP 180432 Feb 03)
  
  
• The head of France’s counterintelligence agency (DST) said on Monday that he was positive there was no “organic link” between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaida terrorist network. Pierre de Bousquet de Florian said “the only certitude we have, is that there is no organic link between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida,” in an interview aired on France-2 television. “I don’t think Saddam Hussein would have taken the risk because he knows he is under surveillance, and I also think he is despised by Osama bin Laden,” he added. However, de Bousquet de Florian conceded there “could be circumstantial conjunctions, which means their interests could temporarily coincide.” (AP 172210 Feb 03)
  

NATO

• NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson on Monday in Sofia voiced satisfaction with the consensus the alliance has reached on starting defense planning in case of war in Iraq. “The alliance is stronger and more resolute and more determined this morning after this long period of discussions as we tried to get our consensus,” he said. He spoke to reporters after Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Pasi briefed him on the country’s preparations to join the alliance and its position on the Iraq conflict. The brief visit was part of Lord Robertson’s tour of NATO candidate countries in Eastern Europe. (AP 171833 Feb 03)

EU

• French President Jacques Chirac launched a withering attack on Monday on eastern European nations who signed letters backing the U.S. position on Iraq, warning it could jeopardize their chances of joining the European Union. “Concerning the candidate countries, honestly I felt they acted frivolously because entry into the European Union implies a minimum of understanding for the others,” President Chirac told reporters after an emergency EU summit on Iraq in Brussels. He warned the candidates the position could be “dangerous” because the parliaments of the 15 EU nations still have to ratify last December’s decision for 10 new members to join the bloc on May 1, 2004. (AP 172244 Feb 03)

BALKANS

• Marking the first time the UN war crimes tribunal has acted against ethnic Albanian suspects, NATO-led peacekeepers on Monday detained three former rebels wanted for atrocities committed during the Kosovo war. In a statement released hours after the operation, NATO said its peacekeepers had detained three men - Haradin Balaj, Isak Musliu and Agim Murtezi - indicted for crimes committed against Serb and ethnic Albanian civilians in May and July 1998. The three were commanders or guards serving with the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army at the Llapushnik prison camp in Glogovac. (AP 172104 Feb 03)
  
  
• A former Yugoslav intelligence officer told the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Monday that Muslim extremists, not Serb gunmen, fired on Muslim peace demonstrators in Sarajevo during a notorious incident that helped start the war in Bosnia. The testimony by Aleksandar Vasiljevic, a key prosecution witness, contradicted the widely held belief that Bosnian Serb forces opened fire from the Holiday Inn hotel on the rally in downtown Sarajevo on April 6, 1992. Vasiljevic, who was not in Sarajevo at the time, was relying on intelligence information, and several of his statements contradicted widely accepted facts. The retired general claimed that security forces intercepted messages from the Muslim extremist militia Green Berets indicating that its men fired on the demonstration from the Technical High School, rather than Serb forces from the Holiday Inn. Messages overheard on the Green Beret’s radio called for the “action to start,” and intelligence officials have video footage of a well known Muslim paramilitary figure leaving the Technical High School after the shooting, he told the court. Reports then also said Bosnian Interior Ministry units arrested six people at the Holiday Inn, while Vasiljevic put the number at three or four. He said all were later released. (AP 172102 Feb 03)
  

OTHER NEWS

• Keeping a promise to impatient European and Arab governments, the Bush administration sent a top American diplomat to London on Monday in a bid to get peacemaking in the Middle East rolling. William Burns, the assistant secretary of state for the Near East, will met with European, Russian and UN officials on an emerging “roadmap” - designed to produce a Palestinian state in 2005 on land Israel has held for more than 35 years. (AP 180145 Feb 03)