Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

14 May 2003

NATO

• Turkey’s Defense Minister pledged to support Ukraine’s bid for deeper ties with Europe in a meeting with President Leonid Kuchma on Tuesday. Vecdi Gonul praised Ukraine’s intent to seek NATO membership and vowed to help the former Soviet republic work more closely with European and international organizations, the Interfax news agency reported. The Turkish Defense Minister also discussed Ukraine’s participation in a tender to supply Turkey with tanks, shipbuilding projects and modernization of military equipment during talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Shkidchenko, the Defense ministry said in a statement. The delegations also discussed security issues in the Black Sea region. Turkish President Akhmet Sezeri is expected to visit Ukraine in June. (AP 131827 May 03)

IRAQ

• The most senior U.S. military officer urged the NATO allies on Tuesday to join the United States and Britain in helping to stabilize Iraq and lay a foundation for its future. “Certainly we’re hopeful that NATO countries or NATO as an alliance could help us inside Iraq in our stability operations, and those discussions are ongoing,” Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters after meeting with his counterparts from the 18 other NATO countries in Brussels. (AP 131657 May 03)

EU

• Just as the EU embarks on its bold expansion into ex-communist eastern Europe, the war in Iraq has opened up a rift between the east and west of the continent which has its roots in two very different post-war histories. A recent gathering of east European thinkers in Hungary’s capital said euro-scepticism may be taking hold among the European Union’s new recruits, partly because of a sense that western Europe does not understand the east as well as it thinks it does. Aleksander Smolar, president of the Stefan Batory Foundation in Warsaw, told a symposium organised by the European Cultural Foundation that French President Chirac failed to appreciate a key psychological factor behind the region’s support for the United States. “The U.S. is more credible for us as a guarantor of security than western Europe, which is still looking for an idea of security and cannot assure its reality,” he said. (Reuters 140102 GMT May 03)

BALKANS

• The Serbian government said on Tuesday it would not advance cooperation with Kosovo’s UN administration until NATO-led peacekeepers handed over a former guerrilla leader. Shefket Musliu, the ex-commander of an ethnic Albanian rebel group, was arrested late last month by the peacekeepers in Kosovo and is wanted by Serbian authorities for assault, extortion and possession of firearms and ammunition. After a meeting in Kosovo’s capital Pristina with UN mission chief Michael Steiner, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic made clear Belgrade expected Musliu’s handover. “Until that happens, we cannot work on other elements related to the common document signed in 2001,” said Covic, referring to an agreement on cooperation between Serbian authorities and Kosovo’s United Nations administration. Steiner confirmed his administration had information that Musliu is “one the most violent, active organised crime figures in the region” but said he was not in its custody. “We don’t have any comment or anything additional to report to the previous report that we have detained one person,” a KFOR spokesman said. (Reuters 131744 GMT May 03)
  
  
• Russia will withdraw its peacekeeping contingent from Bosnia and Kosovo by August, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Tuesday. “The decision to withdraw the peacekeepers doesn’t mean we have lost interest in the (political) settlement in the former Yugoslavia,” Ivanov told a joint meeting of NATO ambassadors and Russian officials. Col.-Gen. Nikolai Kormiltsev, the chief of Russia’s ground forces, said Russia would continue to take part in law enforcement in the Balkans. (Reuters 131151 GMT May 03)

OTHER NEWS

• Lawyers representing a group of Iraqis plan to file a war crimes complaint on Wednesday in a Brussels court against U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of American forces in Iraq. The complaint has already sparked outrage in Washington, but legal experts predicted it would be rejected following recent changes to Belgium’s war crimes law to prevent such charges against Americans. An attorney said the complaint would also include charges against other U.S. military personnel, whom he did not identify. A Belgian prosecutor will study the allegations before deciding whether a case should be opened. “The Belgian government needs to be diligent in taking steps to prevent abuse of the legal system for political ends,” said a U.S. State Department spokesman. (AP 140136 May 03)
  
  
• Russia’s lower house of parliament will take up ratification of the latest U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control treaty on Wednesday, a top legislator said. Lawmaker Andrei Kokoshin said Tuesday that the agenda-setting council of the lower house, or State Duma, had decided on the date at its Tuesday session. President Putin used a meeting on Tuesday with Duma leaders to urge lawmakers to ratify the treaty, calling it an “important document in the sphere of strategic stability.” “Its provisions enable us to develop our strategic forces at a level of reasonable sufficiency, in line with the country’s economic capabilities and the dynamics of the military and political situation in the world,” President Putin said, according to Russian news agencies. (AP 131821 May 03)