Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

27 March 2003

IRAQ

• The United States will not cede control of Iraq to the United Nations if and when it overthrows President Saddam Hussein, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday. “We didn’t take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant dominating control over how it unfolds in the future,” Powell told a House of Representatives subcommittee. “We would not support ... essentially handing everything over to the UN for someone designated by the UN to suddenly become in charge of this whole operation,” he added. Powell said the United Nations should, however, have a role in a post-Saddam Iraq, if only because it makes it easier for other countries to contribute to reconstruction costs. Colin Powell was speaking to the Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee in Washington. (Reuters 262217 GMT Mar 03)
  
  
• Turkey’s military chief, Gen. Ozkok, hinted on Wednesday that Ankara might hold back from plans to send troops into northern Iraq, which Washington fears could undermine its war operations there. Armed forces Chief of General Staff Hilmi Ozkok was speaking a day after Washington announced proposals for war aid loans of up to $8.5 billion for Turkey. The dispatch of troops to Iraq against U.S. advice would make congressional approval of such a package, already doubtful after Turkish refusal to allow a U.S. invasion from its soil, less likely still. Kurdish groups in northern Iraq say they will resist any Turkish deployment. “I believe the Turkish armed forces could make a decision to send additional troops to northern Iraq if it is understood our forces already there will be unable to handle such threats and dangers,” he told a news conference in the southeastern town of Diyarbakir. But he said Turkey would coordinate with the United States, which he described as “our strategic ally,” to avoid any “misunderstandings.” (Reuters 261923 GMT Mar 03)
  
  
• Iraq has executed prisoners of war, the Pentagon’s No. 2 general said as he listed a series of what he called unprecedented Iraqi violations of the laws of war. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apparently was referring to some of the U.S. Army troops captured Sunday by Iraqi forces in the city of An Nasiriyah. Intelligence officials have received one uncorroborated report indicating that at least some of the dead soldiers had been captured alive and executed in public, a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday on condition of anonymity. The information - which did not come from an intercepted communication, as the New York Times reported Wednesday - is of undetermined reliablility, the official said. Pentagon officials said Wednesday that the International Committee of the Red Cross still had not been granted access to the five Army soldiers captured Sunday and the two Army helicopter pilots captured a day later. (AP 270258 Mar 03)
  
  
• U.S. paratroopers established a major beachhead in northern Iraq on Thursday, paving the way for a new front in the war to oust President Saddam Hussein that appears to be proving harder to win than Washington expected. About 1,000 U.S. troops parachuted into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq on Wednesday night and took control of an air base. (Reuters 270433 GMT Mar 03)

NATO

• NATO Secretary-General George Robertson tiptoed around suggestions that the 19-nation alliance should play a role in post-war peacekeeping in Iraq as it took a key step on Wednesday towards admitting seven new members. Asked about a report in the Wall Street Journal that several European members were seeking to persuade France to allow NATO to take the key role, Lord Robertson told a news conference that the issue had not been raised because the situation had not yet arisen. “We haven’t yet got to a situation that would be called post-war Iraq. But if somebody comes along and asks the alliance to do something in the aftermath of that conflict, then the NATO council will consider it,” he said. “Nobody has approached us as yet.” A French diplomat said the idea was a non-starter for Paris. Lord Robertson was speaking at a news conference in Brussels after a signing ceremony of the accession protocols of seven East European countries invited to join NATO last November -- Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania and Bulgaria. (Reuters 261827 GMT Mar 03)

EU

• The Iraq war and the divisions it has bared among European governments should lead Europe to craft a stronger defense identity if they want to have a meaningful say in world affairs, European Commission President Romano Prodi said Wednesday in Brussels. He praised Germany, France and Belgium for starting “a timely and good” debate on a European defense undertaking to ease Europe’s reliance on America for its security. Prodi urged other EU nations to join them. Aides said Prodi did not mean for Europeans to go it alone and quit the U.S.-led NATO alliance, but rather build a stronger “European pillar” inside it. A European defense initiative without proper capabilities would be a “paper tiger,” NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson said Wednesday at a ceremony in Brussels. (AP 261942 Mar 03)

BALKANS

• The Macedonian (sic) parliament on Wednesday voted to approve the EU’s first military operation, setting the stage for the union to take over from NATO peacekeepers in Macedonia (sic) next week Monday. “The responsibility for the country’s security rests with the Macedonian (sic) government, but European forces will be here to support the peace process,” Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva told parliamentarians in Skopje. The biggest contribution will be from France. French Brig. Gen. Pierre Maral will command the force on the ground, reporting to its overall commander, German Adm. Rainer Feist, who also serves as second-in-command for NATO troops in Europe. (AP 261454 Mar 03)