Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

19 February 2003

AFGHANISTAN

• Afghanistan’s fledgling government needs international support if it is to prevent a slide back into conflict and human rights violations, two United Nations experts said in studies released on Tuesday. “Afghanistan’s institutions and structures are in their infancy. They will remain fragile unless more resources are put at their disposal,” said Asma Jahangir, the UN expert on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, in a 26-page report to the UN Human Rights Commission. In a separate report to the commission - which meets in Geneva March 17-April 25 - the UN expert on the general human rights situation in Afghanistan demanded an expansion of the international peacekeeping force. (AP 181510 Feb 03)

IRAQ

• Russia on Tuesday gave its backing to the European Union’s declaration warning Iraq that it has one “last chance” to disarm peacefully, but sets no deadline and insists that war is not inevitable. European Commission President Romano Prodi paid a quick visit to Moscow on Tuesday to brief Russian President Vladimir Putin on the resolution. After the meeting, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told reporters that President Putin “voiced a positive attitude” about the EU leaders’ statement on Iraq, noting that “the positions of Russia and the EU ... are close.” (AP 182054 Feb 03)
  
  
• German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said on Tuesday he did not believe there was a need at this point for the UN Security Council to take up the issue of a second resolution seeking authority to attack Iraq. “At the moment, I think we would be well off staying with resolution 1441,” Schroeder told Germany’s ARD television network. “It gives us everything we need.” “And that’s why there is no reason for a second resolution at this time,” Schroeder added. (Reuters 190116 GMT Feb 03)
  

EU

• The German admiral who is to take overall command of the European Union’s first military operation next month said on Tuesday that the 300-strong Macedonian (sic) peacekeeping mission would have a significance well beyond its size. “We are laying the foundation for possibly more complex operations in the future,” said Adm. Rainer Feist, who is the deputy supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe. “It is a very small operation but it is the first time and that gives us an opportunity to gain experience,” he added. He stressed the EU would cooperate closely with NATO after it takes over the peacekeeping mission from alliance troops. (AP 181736 Feb 03)

BALKANS

• A prominent Kosovo Albanian war crimes suspect was detained on Tuesday and is expected to be transferred to the United Nations tribunal in The Hague, the prosecutor’s office said. Fatmir Limaj is the highest-ranking of four Kosovo Albanian former guerrillas named in the UN war crimes tribunal’s first indictment against ex-members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The office of the UN war crimes prosecutor denied reports in Kosovo that Limaj, an ally of ex-Kosovo Albanian rebel chief Hashim Thaci and a senior commander during the 1998-9 conflict, had handed himself over to Austrian police. “He was arrested in a state of the former Yugoslavia,” spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said. UN war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte voiced anger earlier on Tuesday over KFOR’s failure to detain Fatmir Limaj, saying he had been able to leave Kosovo on a regular flight last Friday even though KFOR had a warrant for his arrest. She said he had traveled with Thaci but did not say where to. “It escapes all understanding that Fatmir Limaj, a member of parliament, a public figure, could be allowed to leave Kosovo with that ease two and a half weeks after KFOR had been in possession of the indictment and arrest warrant.” A spokesman for KFOR declined comment. (Reuters 182139 GMT Feb 03)

OTHER NEWS

• The Bush administration plans a meeting this year to discuss possibly building a new generation of small nuclear weapons that could be used against hard-to-reach targets like underground bunkers, according to documents released by a nuclear disarmament advocacy group. The Los Alamos Study Group posted on its Web site the minutes from a Jan. 10 Pentagon meeting it said was called to plan a secret conference “to discuss what new nuclear weapons to build, how they might be tested... and how to sell the ideas to Congress and the American public.” According to the leaked documents, the conference of military officials and nuclear scientists would be held at U.S. Strategic Command headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, possibly the week of Aug. 4, 2003. The Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Los Alamos group did not say how it obtained the documents which it said demonstrated the administration’s “bold sweep of nuclear weapons planning.” “It’s very rare that so many details about the nuclear weapons agenda of the Bush administration would appear in the same documents, in the same place,” spokesman Greg Mello said in an interview on Tuesday explaining why the group had made the material public. A spokeswoman for the Pentagon could not immediately confirm the meeting. (Reuters 190323 GMT Feb 03)