Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

23 April 2003

NATO

• According to AFP, a Polish Defense Ministry spokesman said Wednesday that Warsaw is negotiating with Russia on behalf of four central European countries the upgrading of 106 Russian-built Mi-24 helicopters to NATO standards. Poland is representing the four-nation Visegrad group in talks on the ground, the spokesman reportedly said, adding: “Poland has been mandated by the other countries of the group, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.” According to the dispatch, Warsaw had hoped to strike a deal during Tuesday’s visit to Moscow by Defense Minister Szmajdzinski, but Polish military sources said the Russians had set unacceptable conditions. “To modernize these helicopters we need the green light from Russia. But it wants to carry out the upgrade itself, which is not possible in that NATO technologies are involved,” the spokesman indicated. The dispatch claims that while Poland wants to limit the arrangement to buying spare parts, Moscow is refusing to provide them, citing intellectual property rights.
  
  
• AFP quotes sources in the Bulgarian Defense Ministry saying that Bulgaria Tuesday officially opened its first NATO-standard military airport. According to the dispatch, the sources said modern radar and navigational systems have been installed at Graf Ignatievo airport, near the city of Plovdiv in central Bulgaria, giving it “friend or foe” recognition capabilities to identity incoming aircraft. Sofia’s Trud, April 22, said the new radar system would enable NATO aircraft to land at the Graf Ignatievo airfield and remove the need for Bulgaria’s allies to bring mobile radars every time they conduct training with the Bulgarian Air Force.

IRAQ

• France Tuesday made a gesture to Washington by calling for the suspension of international sanctions against Iraq, reports Le Figaro. The newspaper observes that France wants to use the necessary return of the debate to the UN to work to restore a multilateral framework and the unity of the international community. But, adds the article, unlike in the prewar phase, it is not trying to step too much to the forefront. True to its new “pragmatic” approach on Iraq, it adds, France is being careful not to further damage its relations with the United States and Britain. Among other things, the newspaper stresses that Paris is not committed to any particular model for legitimizing the provisional Iraqi government. Nor is it set on any particular kind of peacekeeping operation. “The idea that NATO could take on the job under a UN mandate is not excluded. As to possible French military involvement, President Chirac has simply indicated that France will assume its responsibilities when the time comes,” the article continues. The Independent suggests that France’s “surprise initiative,” seemed aimed equally at boosting the speed of reconstruction and mending some of the damage done to relations between Paris and Washington in the run-up to the war. The newspaper stresses that the U.S. ambassador to the UN publicly welcomed the shift from France on suspending sanctions. Saying that the measures should be suspended as soon as possible, the ambassador added that the US was looking “to working together with the delegation of France and other delegations toward that end,” adds the article. A related article in the Washington Times notes, however, that the White House Tuesday contradicted France and Russia by denying a linkage between lifting economic sanctions and any official declaration that Iraq was free of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Relations between Washington and Paris remain at the center of media interest.
An op-ed in the International Herald Tribune suggests that President Chirac can “throw down an important card” at a meeting next Tuesday of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg that is meant to draw new outlines for an autonomous European military force. If the discussions produce a project for something that looks like a rival or competitor to NATO, then Chirac will have chosen a collision with the United States, says the article, explaining: The autonomous EU force under discussion in Brussels would be one, in theory at least, that could project military power in the manner of NATO or the Americans. The force would give Chirac an army with a European name that on paper could raise EU security policy to something close to eye-level with the Americans. In getting there, the red lines not to be crossed have been clearly established by NATO and the United States. They do not want the duplication on a European level of NATO’s planning staff or headquarters. “There must be no EU version of NATO’s military decision-making center, called SHAPE.”