Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

5 March 2003

IRAQ

• The United Nations has secretly drawn up a plan to establish a post-Saddam Hussein government in Iraq, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. The London Times said the plan was produced over the past month. The Times, which said it had obtained a copy of the 60-page plan, said it was ordered by Louise Frechette – the Canadian deputy of Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general - and drawn up at the UN headquarters in New York by a six-member pre-planning group. The paper said the plan envisages the United Nations stepping in about three months after a successful war against Iraq and steering the country toward self-government, as forces are now doing in Afghanistan. The Times said the plan resists British pressure to set up a full-scale UN administration. The report also says the United Nations should avoid taking direct control of Iraqi oil or staging elections under U.S. military occupation. Instead, the plan proposes the creation of a UN Assistance Mission in Iraq to help establish a new government, The Times said. The paper quoted unidentified UN sources as saying they expected the plan to be implemented, even if the United States goes to war without a UN resolution authorizing military action. The plan recommends that the United Nations immediately appoint a senior official to coordinate its strategy, who would become the UN special representative in post-war Iraq, The Times added. (AP 042255 Mar 03)
  
  
• France has all but ruled out using its veto in the UN Security Council to block a U.S.-backed resolution paving the way for war on Iraq, a weekly newspaper reported in its Wednesday edition. Le Canard enchaine quoted President Jacques Chirac as telling a small private gathering on Feb. 26 that a veto would be pointless because it would not stop U.S. President George W. Bush from launching military action. “France is doing everything it can, but the problem is that it is impossible to stop Bush from pursuing his logic of war to the end,” President Chirac was quoted as saying by Le Canard, a satirical newspaper that is known to have well-informed sources. Le Canard also quoted Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin as privately telling a group of conservative lawmakers on Feb. 25 that “using the right of veto would be shooting the Americans in the back.” The newspaper did not say how it obtained the information. The Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the report. (AP 041957 Mar 03)
  

NMD

• Denmark said Tuesday that it is willing to let the United States upgrade a radar facility at a base in Greenland for a proposed missile defense system. “To allow the Thule radar to be included in the future architecture for a missile defense will contribute to reducing the vulnerability of the United States,” Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said in Copenhagen. He called security a global issue that must be “taken care of jointly with our allies.” The remarks came after the government presented the conclusions of a 35-page report on the U.S. request to the parliament’s Foreign Policy Committee. The purpose of the report was to “have an open debate” in Denmark and Greenland, said Moeller, stressing that “the final decision has not been taken.” (AP 041652 Mar 03)

BALKANS

• An explosion Tuesday in the volatile northwest of Macedonia (sic) killed two NATO peacekeepers and wounded three local civilians, an alliance official said in Skopje. The accident occurred near the villages of Sopot and Sicevo, 40 kilometers northeast of Skopje. An investigation was underway, a NATO spokesman said. A Western official speaking on condition of anonymity, however, told The Associated Press that “two Polish soldiers sustained fatal injuries in a de-mining incident.” (AP 042236 Mar 03)