Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

5 June 2003

TERRORISM

• Letters containing a nerve gas ingredient were sent to the Belgian prime minister’s office, the U.S. and British embassies and a court trying al Qaeda suspects in Brussels, the federal prosecutor said on Wednesday. Two postal workers were taken to hospital after being exposed to the chemicals in the letters at mail depots. No one else was injured by the 10 letters sent to a variety of targets, also including the Saudi Arabian embassy, three ministries, an airport and a port authority. Police suspect the letters came from a single source in Belgium, said a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor’s office to the VRT television. (Reuters 041754 GMT Jun 03)

NATO

• NATO was no closer to choosing its next secretary-general as foreign ministers ended a meeting on Wednesday, with many allies still hoping weightier candidates will enter what is now just a two-horse race. Diplomats said Italian Defence Minister Antonio Martino had last week formally ruled himself out as a possible successor to Lord Robertson. That apparently left just Portugal’s Antonio Vitorino, the European Union’s Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner, and Norwegian Defence Minister Kristin Krohn Devold. Officials said the two-day meeting in Madrid of the 19 nations’ foreign ministers did not formally discuss who would land the prestigious job. (Reuters 041705 GMT Jun 03)
  
  
• Czech Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla on Wednesday said he would nominate Miroslav Kostelka as the NATO country’s next defence minister. The post officially became open on Tuesday when President Vaclav Klaus accepted the resignation of Jaroslav Tvrdik, who quit over spending cuts he said threatened his reform plan for the armed forces.(Reuters 042013 GMT Jun 03)

EU

• Seeking a larger international role, the European Union decided Wednesday to send its new peacekeeping force to Congo, where it will lead a UN effort to stop rebel fighting. EU ambassadors in Brussels approved the plan five days after the UN Security Council authorized a 1,400-member multinational force. EU ministers are expected to formally ratify the decision on Thursday. “This is something politically very important,” said Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy representative. “It proves that the European Union has the will to act.” French troops could start deploying this weekend, a French armed forces spokeswoman said in Paris. European leaders insist the force is not intended to weaken NATO, but instead would strengthen the alliance by increasing Europe’s military capacity. (AP 042219 Jun 03)

BALKANS

• A family of three Serbs were murdered in a Kosovo town, Obilic, overnight in the worst single attack against the small Serb minority in over two years, United Nations police said on Wednesday. The province’s UN administrator said the killings were clearly aimed at stopping reconciliation between Serbs and the ethnic Albanian majority. UN administrator for Kosovo Michael Steiner, visiting the scene, called the attack a “heinous act and perfidious crime which was directed against multi-ethnicity in Kosovo.” Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic said in a statement that violence against Serbs in Kosovo was growing as the UN continued its policy of transferring authority to Kosovo’s temporary institutions, dominated by the Albanian majority. (Reuters 041423 GMT Jun 03)

AFGHANISTAN

• Russia offered to support NATO’s peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan on Wednesday but ruled out sending troops to a country where Moscow pulled out of a disastrous occupation in the 1980s. Alliance Secretary-General George Robertson said after a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Madrid that the offer, made by Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, highlighted the dramatic improvement in relations between the Cold War foes. “A few years ago...it would have been inconceivable that a NATO presence in Afghanistan would have been welcomed by the Russian authorities,” he told a news conference. Foreign Minister Ivanov did not specify in what areas Russia could help NATO. A NATO diplomat said the 19-nation alliance was looking with Russia at various areas of support such as intelligence-sharing, logistics and the provision of air bases in Tajikistan. Russia is thought to have about 10,000 troops in Tajikistan, Moscow’s key ally in the region. Both Lord Robertson and Foreign Minister Ivanov spoke in glowing terms of the cooperation between the alliance and Moscow since the NATO-Russia Council was established a year ago amid declarations that the Cold War had finally ended. (Reuters 041354 GMT Jun 03)

IRAN

• The son of the late Shah of Iran has said he believes there will be protests, strikes and a non-violent uprising against the Iranian regime in July, a Turkish newspaper reported on Wednesday. Reza Pahlavi, in an exclusive interview with the daily Vatan, hinted that stopping production in Iran’s oil industry would be key to changing the regime dominated by religious leaders into a secular democracy. “Iranian people will test (the regime’s) prowess without needing a military operation,” he said. Pahlavi argued that many members of the regime were losing their faith in the system and that the army was also uneasy. (AP 042352 Jun 03)