Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

4 June 2003

NATO

• NATO nations put their bust-up over Iraq behind them on Tuesday, vowing to push ahead with a radical overhaul of the alliance to deal with security threats far beyond the borders it defended during the Cold War. Secretary-General Robertson said that “NATO has weathered its storms in remarkably good shape.” “We are not going to be some global policeman. But we’re not going to be a European beat policeman either,” Lord Robertson added. Ministers discussed reshaping NATO for a post-September 11 world in which many countries see terrorism as the main threat. But Belgium sounded a note of caution. While NATO had a role to play in fighting terrorism, it should not neglect its main mission of assuming collective defence, Deputy Foreign Minister Annemie Neyts said. A senior U.S. official said there was still much for the Western defence alliance to do in Bosnia. The United States also said it was too early to discuss putting an alliance stabilisation force into the Middle East. A few countries attending the Madrid meeting had suggested this as a possibility if current peace talks were successful. U.S. Deputy Secretary for Political Affairs Marc Grossman, told reporters NATO was “well on the way to recovery.” But diplomats said much remained to be done to rebuild trust within the alliance. One diplomat said there was deep suspicion that “old Europe” countries led by France were determined to build an EU defence policy increasingly independent of - and even in competition with - the U.S.-dominated alliance. (Reuters 031847 GMT Jun 03)

IRAQ

• British lawmakers decided on Tuesday to launch an inquiry into Prime Minister Tony Blair’s motives for attacking Iraq as he faced accusations of misleading parliament and the public over Saddam Hussein’s suspected banned weapons. Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee said late on Tuesday it would look into the decision to go to war, focusing particularly on the issue of weapons of mass destruction. (Reuters 032326 GMT Jun 03)

BALKANS

• Washington sought on Tuesday to cool European Union ambitions to take over peacekeeping in Bosnia from NATO by the middle of 2004, arguing that it was too early to even start discussions. A senior U.S. official said there was still much for the Western defence alliance to do in Bosnia, including rounding up of indicted war crimes suspects, stamping out threats of terrorism and uniting the country’s ethnically divided society. “The time is not right to begin the discussion,” the official told reporters. “The security situation is better but we still have 12,000 troops there and we don’t see that coming down soon. It would be better, for the EU, it we were talking about a smaller force,” he added. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said that the Union was not disappointed by the United States’ stand on the Bosnia mission and Greece, the bloc’s outgoing president, also sought to play it down. “The question that has been put on the table by some of our allies, and particularly the United States, is of preparedness and time,” Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou said. “It’s not a difference of principle, as I understand the position,” he added. NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said the EU needed to take a long hard look at taking over what would be a much more complicated operation than the one in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. “But the original targets need not be impossible,” he said, leaving the door open to a takeover by mid-2004. (AP 031835 Jun 03)

OTHER NEWS

• The world continues to embrace democracy and free market policies as promoted by the United States, although many Muslim countries are fearful of Washington after the U.S.-led war on Iraq, according to two international opinion surveys released on Tuesday. There is fear in the Muslim world of American power and for “what we have in mind,” said at a conference former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who chairs the Pew Global Attitudes Project. The group polled 16,000 people in 20 countries and the West Bank and Gaza Strip last month for a post-war survey. That survey updates the group’s annual 44-nation global attitudes survey conducted in 2002; both results were issued together. In all but one of the Muslim countries surveyed on post-war opinions, a majority of the population said they were worried that the United States could become a military threat to their country. The United Nations and NATO have also taken a tumble in world opinion, in nearly every country for which benchmark measures were available, according to the post-war survey. Non-Muslim nations saw the United States in a better light. (Reuters 032120 GMT Jun 03)