Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

8 April 2003

IRAQ

• U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Monday that Washington would send a team to Iraq this week to begin looking at what is needed to set up an interim Iraqi authority. He made clear that the United States hoped to set up quickly an interim Iraqi authority made up of Iraqi exiles and people still living in the country. Powell said in his talks with NATO colleagues that they ... “accepted the possibility there may be a role for NATO organizations, NATO units to go in for a peacekeeping, security or stability role, perhaps helping in the search for weapons of mass destruction infrastructure.” (Reuters 072101 GMT Apr 03)
  
  
• Laying claim to “an important role” for the United Nations in postwar Iraq, Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday stressed that only the world body can bring legitimacy to the work of rebuilding the nation. “I’m sure there’s going to be a role for the United Nations and that’s going to have to be further discussed and further defined,” U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said. “We have said that people shouldn’t be surprised if the coalition is going to take the lead in Iraq, given the fact that it’s the coalition that has basically sacrificed its blood and treasure to achieve the outcome that now seems to be inevitable.” A UN statement issued after the meeting said the secretary-general and the council members agreed that any new UN role in Iraq would need a new Security Council resolution. Kofi Annan will be consulting the leaders of key council nations in Europe on post-war arrangements. He will be in Paris on Thursday, Berlin and London on Friday and St. Petersburg, Russia on Saturday. (AP 072219 Apr 03)
  
  
• Arab nations decided to push for a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a cease-fire in Iraq. The 22-member Arab Group at the United Nations will send a letter to General Assembly President Jan Kavan on Tuesday asking for a meeting, said Yemen’s UN Ambassador Abdullah Alsaidi, the group’s chairman this month. The group will seek a “very mild” resolution, he said late on Monday. “It will ask for a cease-fire, respect for Iraqi sovereignty, territorial integrity. It will ask for the unity of Iraq.” The Non-Aligned Movement, which represents about 115 mainly developing countries, also discussed supporting a General Assembly resolution on Monday. But members said the movement is divided over the war, so it will not back the Arab Group in calling for an assembly meeting. (AP 080259 Apr 03)

BALKANS

• The investigation into the murder of Serbia’s prime minister has uncovered links between the alleged assassins and allies of former Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica, state-run media said Monday. The reports, which could not be independently verified, said that Kostunica’s military advisers had met in secret with paramilitary commanders suspected in the March 12 assassination of Zoran Djindjic, the state-run Tanjug news agency and state television reported, citing government sources. Kostunica’s military and security advisers, Lt. Gen. Aco Tomic and Rade Bulatovic, allegedly met in December with Milan Lukovic and Dusan Spasojevic, the prime suspects in Djindjic’s murder, the reports said. A statement from Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia rejected allegations that its leader was “in any way responsible for the killing of Djindjic.” (AP 071938 Apr 03)

RUSSIA

• A Russian navy squadron has set sail for the Indian Ocean to take part in joint maneuvers with the Indian navy, and officials reaffirmed on Monday that the deployment was unrelated to the war in Iraq. The Kommersant daily said Monday that the exercises would take place in the Arabian Sea, allowing the Russian squadron to monitor U.S. navy ships in the nearby Persian Gulf. And the Izvestia daily claimed that the surface ships would be accompanied by a nuclear submarine carrying nuclear weapons. Asked last week whether Russian ships would take nuclear weapons, Defense Minister Ivanov refused to comment. (AP 071709 Apr 03)