Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

10 March 2003

AFGHANISTAN

• Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Sunday that a massive programme to disarm thousands of factional fighters, seen as the biggest threat to peace, would begin over the next few weeks. Karzai told reporters that a US $51 million pledge he had received from international donors at a conference in Tokyo last month would help to kick off the process to demobilise, disarm and re-integrate the former soldiers. (Reuters 091712 GMT Mar 03)
  
  
• International peacekeepers said on Sunday that they would step up patrols in the Afghan capital after a remotely controlled bomb killed an Afghan interpreter and wounded a Dutch soldier in the first fatal attack on the force. (Reuters 091114 GMT Mar 03)

IRAQ 

• Conflicting stands on the Iraq crisis are not creating divisions between the European Union and the United States, a leading EU official said on Friday in Ljubljana, Slovenia. “Views within the EU on a settlement of the Iraqi crisis differ,” said Romano Prodi, president of the EU Commission. “This does not mean that there is a split between the EU and the U.S.” (AP 072024 Mar 03)

BALKANS

• International officials froze assets allegedly linked to top war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic on Friday in a strike against the support network that has helped the wartime leader of Bosnia’s Serbs evade arrest for years. Bosnia’s top international official, Paddy Ashdown, ordered that bank accounts and assets of two alleged Karadzic associates, Momcilo Mandic and Milovan Bjelica, be frozen in Bosnia and abroad. Ashdown said Mandic was widely regarded as the financial controller of Karadzic’s secret network, while Bjelica was Karadzic’s main communications link to the outside world. SFOR raided Bjelica’s offices as the announcement was made and seized documents. Paddy Ashdown also removed Bjelica from his position as chairman of the municipal assembly of Pale, Karadzic’s former stronghold. (AP 071940 Mar 03)
  
  
• Two former ethnic Albanian guerrilla leaders in southern Serbia said on Sunday that violent incidents in the region could get worse and the international community had to enforce a peace deal there. “All these incidents are not a good sign for the region,” told ex-rebel leader Shefket Musliu. Speaking in Pristina, Musliu said the international community had to increase its presence in the Presevo Valley and speed up implementation of the peace deal “before it becomes too late.” Another former rebel leader, Jonuz Musliu, also warned the West it had a responsibility for what was happening in the region because it was not pushing through the peace agreement. “The situation is very tense and it’s getting out of control,” Musliu, now a municipal leader in the central town of Bujanovac, told Pristina-based news agency Kosovo Live. Authorities in Belgrade were not immediately available for comment. (Reuters 091747 GMT Mar 03)
  
  
• Croatia, Albania and Macedonia (sic) all eyeing NATO membership in the next round of its enlargement, started coordinating efforts on Friday to help usher them into the alliance in 2006. Foreign ministers from the Balkan countries, joined by U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Lawrence Rossin, met in the southern Adriatic resort of Dubrovnik to chart the way forward, including reforms and lobbying for support. The three will sign a partnership charter with the United States this month in Washington. It is aimed at encouraging the military and democratic reforms needed for full NATO membership. (Reuters 071253 GMT Mar 03)
  
  
• NATO said Friday that a powerful explosion which killed two of its soldiers earlier this week was a “criminal act,” but that it did not know who was responsible for the blast. The explosion killed two Polish soldiers and injured three Macedonian (sic) civilians on Tuesday when a land mine went off under their vehicle. A NATO spokesman said that NATO was supporting an investigation into the incident by the Macedonian (sic) Interior Ministry. (AP 071300 Mar 03)