Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

10 June 2003

NATO

• Non-aligned Finland, which has had to strike a balance between East and West due to its long border with Russia, is in no hurry to join NATO but is instead focusing on Europe’s defence policy, its defence minister said. “In the last 60 years, the non-aligned line has been quite successful...We are not in any hurry for NATO,” Matti Vanhanen said. “In the next one to two years, we are more interested in how the defence discussion in the EU will develop.” He said Finland wanted to see how NATO emerges from its current expansion before making any decisions on joining. In the meantime, the country would continue to work side by side the alliance in crisis management operations such as Kosovo. Regarding the beefing up of the EU’s military capability, Vanhanen indicated Finland was cool towards a plan to set up a multinational defence headquarters and planning unit for the bloc. “We must develop our forces in close cooperation with NATO, and there cannot be any duplication,” Vanhanen said in the interview late on Friday. “We need everyone’s contribution. The discussion is best done within the EU context,” he added. (Reuters 091254 GMT Jun 03)
  
  
• Portugal has gambled its good relations with some of its European Union partners by aligning with the United States over the past year, and this week’s visit to Lisbon by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is a chance to translate Washington’s goodwill into concrete benefits. Rumsfeld is responding to an invitation from his Portuguese counterpart Paulo Portas, who is currently trying to figure out how he can reequip the outdated Portuguese armed forces without worsening the country’s cash plight. For Rumsfeld, this first stop on his five-day European tour is a public display of gratitude for the Portuguese government’s diplomatic support in the U.S.-led war on Iraq. Portugal is pursuing Iraqi reconstruction contracts. It is also lobbying for a NATO regional command headquarters to be installed at Oeiras, outside Lisbon, and its EU commissioner Antonio Vitorino is in the running for the NATO Secretary General post when it becomes vacant later this year. Portugal is trying to negotiate the purchase of six new Hercules C-130J transport planes from U.S. company Lockheed Martin because they are much cheaper, Portas says. The defense minister also wants to replace three 37-year-old Navy frigates with used - but more modern - ones. New helicopters, armored personnel carriers and a replacement for the army’s standard issue rifle are other items on Portas’s wish-list. (AP 081105 Jun 03)

BALKANS

• European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Friday that Kosovo Albanians and Serbia could start talks on Kosovo issues later this month when European Union and Balkan leaders meet in Greece. He was speaking to reporters in Belgrade during a tour of the region ahead of the EU summit in Thessaloniki on June 21. He said the talks, which would be the first direct consultations since the war, could deal with issues affecting both ethnic Albanians and the small Serb minority left in Kosovo, including the return of refugees and security for minorities. But he said the all-important question of Kosovo’s future status could not be broached before democratic and legal standards were met by its local institutions, and there was still some way to go. (Reuters 061434 GMT Jun 03)
  
  
• Serbia’s prime minister on Monday urged Kosovo’s UN administrators to stop transferring authority to the province’s local institutions, saying Kosovo’s Serbs were being endangered by the change. Zoran Zivkovic made the comment after meeting with Serbs from Obilic, an ethnically mixed Kosovo town where a Serb family of three was hacked to death last week. UN, Serb and ethnic Albanian officials condemned the attack as a hate crime. Zivkovic said he had managed to persuade the Obilic Serbs to abandon plans to flee to central Serbia, promising he would ask UN and NATO officials to protect them better. (AP 091832 Jun 03)

IRAQ

• Senior Bush administration officials on Sunday rejected accusations they exaggerated threats posed by Iraq’s weapons, calling the charges “outrageous” and the results of “revisionist history.” Appearing on morning news programs, Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said there was broad consensus in the intelligence community that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and they believe that intelligence was sound. Powell, on CNN, also defended the pace of work to stabilize Iraq, saying the top U.S. civilian administrator there, L. Paul Bremer, has decided to “put together a more broad-based council of advisers and ministers to help him begin to get the institutions of the government running” instead of moving to form an interim government. Powell said Bremer was “absolutely correct in moving a little more slowly ... to make sure that all the various groups in Iraq are represented, and that we focus on institution building and put responsible leaders into institution.” (Reuters 081822 GMT Jun 03)
  
  
• The United Nations has decided not to replace Hans Blix as executive chairman of the Iraqi inspection commission for the time being, but it intends to appoint his deputy as the acting chief officer, diplomats said on Monday. Demetrius Perricos of Greece, who is currently serving as the unit’s director of the division of planning and operations, will become the acting executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) on July 1, the envoys said. (Reuters 092014 GMT Jun 03)
  
  
• The Netherlands will send 1,100 peacekeepers to southern Iraq to join the British-led multinational stabilization force, the Dutch government said. The Cabinet decided Friday to contribute a battalion of marines under United Nations Security Council resolution 1483, according to a Foreign Minister statement posted on its Web site. The Dutch forces will be stationed in the sparsely-populated southern al-Muthanna region for an initial six months, and possibly up to a year. No departure date was set, but Defense Minister Henk Kamp said the forces may first go to Kuwait in August for an acclimatization period. Poland also said on Friday that it has assembled a 7,000-strong multilateral force for peacekeeping in Iraq, with participation from more than a dozen countries. (AP 071224 Jun 03)