Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

2 June 2003

NATO

• U.S. President Bush, seeking to heal bitter wounds lingering from the Iraq war, called on NATO partners new and old on Saturday to unite against terrorism. “This is no time to stir up divisions in a great alliance,” he said. “Today our alliance faces a new enemy: a lethal combination of terror groups, outlaw states seeking weapons of mass destruction and an ideology of power and domination that targets the innocent and justifies any crime,” he said. “This is a time for all of us to unite in the defense of liberty, and to step up to the shared duties of free nations.” President Bush announced a new effort, the Proliferation Security Initiative, in which the United States, Poland and other unspecified countries will search planes and ships carrying “suspect cargo.” The initiative aims to seize illicit weapons and missile technologies and other agents of terrorism, Bush said. President Bush sought to defend Poland against critics elsewhere in Europe of its pro-U.S. stance on the war in Iraq. “You have not come all this way, through occupations and tyranny and brave uprisings, only to be told that you must now choose between Europe and America,” Bush said. “Poland is a good citizen of Europe and Poland is a close friend of America. And there is no conflict between the two.” (AP 311237 May 03)
  
  
• Faced with a wait of six years before the first deliveries of Airbus military transport planes, NATO has opted for a stop-gap plan that will include leasing planes from its former Cold War foes. Diplomats said on Friday that after a fierce debate which pitted Washington and NATO Secretary-General Robertson against a majority of European allies, it was agreed that the alliance would lease Antonov-124 aircraft from Ukraine. (Reuters 301839 GMT May 03)

WAR ON TERRORISM

• The United States will not pursue deterrence or containment policies in its so-called war on terrorism but would instead seek to utterly destroy its enemies, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Saturday in West Point. In a speech to the 2003 graduating class of the U.S. Military Academy, Dick Cheney also warned that the United States remained willing to use its military might against any nation supporting terrorists. (Reuters 312146 GMT May 03)

IRAQ

• A senior U.S. senator on Sunday promised a full investigation into the growing controversy over whether the Bush administration deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq’s chemical and biological arms. “Under my leadership of the armed services committee and that under Pat Roberts (on the intelligence committee) we’re going to conduct a very thorough review and investigation,” Sen. John Warner said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” He expressed confidence in Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet. “These men would not manipulate for political purposes or in any other way that information,” Warner told CNN. He also said that Tenet had assured him that he would provide Congress with all the statements made by the administration on weapons of mass destruction and the underlying intelligence that supported those statements. (Reuters 020202 GMT Jun 03)

BALKANS

• NATO-led peacekeepers said on Friday they had launched a lottery -- with a car as the top prize -- for Bosnians who turn in illegally held wartime weapons. More than seven years since the end of Bosnia’s 1992-5 war between its rival ethnic groups, the peacekeepers say that almost every house possesses some kind of weapon. The “Harvest Reward” lottery has already started and will last until June 22. It is part of the five-year-old Operation Harvest, which aims to collect all wartime weapons. (Reuters 301604 GMT May 03)

OTHER NEWS

• U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice repeated Washington’s complaints against France in an interview on Saturday only hours before the two countries’ leaders were due for their first meeting since the Iraq war. Rice’s remarks, in an interview with the daily Le Monde, appeared on Paris newsstands as President Jacques Chirac told journalists in St Petersburg that French-American relations were good and he looked forward to meeting President George W. Bush. “American power was considered (by France) to be more dangerous than Saddam Hussein, to put it bluntly,” Rice said, according to the French translation of her remarks. “This is something we simply do not understand.” Rice complained that France had not only criticised the war but actively tried to rally other countries to provide “checks and balances” against the United States. She also lashed out at France’s post-Iraq diplomacy when asked about Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin’s meeting last week with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. “I don’t understand why one continues to be interested in Arafat and his rhetoric,” she answered. “The Palestinians need leaders who fight terrorism, which is not the case with Arafat.” (Reuters 311141 GMT May 03)
  
  
• Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush signed a largely symbolic treaty on Sunday that will slash numbers of deployed nuclear warheads. Compliance will be based on START-1, but Washington will store rather than destroy many of its decommissioned warheads, despite deep Russian reservations. (Reuters 011934 GMT Jun 03)