Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

11 June 2003

NATO

• In an unorthodox step, U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has picked a general who retired three years ago to return to duty and become the Army’s new chief of staff, senior defense officials said on Tuesday. The officials said Rumsfeld asked President Bush to nominate retired four-star Army Gen. Peter Schoomaker, who previously headed elite U.S. Special Operations forces, to succeed retiring Gen. Eric Shinseki as the Army’s top officer. Gen. Shinseki departs on Wednesday. He’s choice of a retiree to vault past top active Army generals to head the service and become a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff comes against a backdrop of strained relations between him and the Army. One official said Rumsfeld had sent the Schoomaker recommendation to the White House on Tuesday. (Reuters 110036 GMT Jun 03)
  
• The United States is weighing pulling out four F-15 fighters from Iceland, U.S. officials said on Tuesday in Washington. Washington wants the planes out because it views Russia as far less of a threat than the Soviet Union. Iceland, which has no military of its own, fears the loss of the U.S. air defense capability could leave it vulnerable. U.S. President Bush raised the issue of the four jets based at Keflavik Naval Air Station in a letter delivered to Icelandic Prime Minister David Oddsson last week without explicitly threatening to withdraw them, U.S. officials added. (Reuters 102140 GMT Jun 03)

IRAQ

• Poland sent 26 army officers to Iraq on Tuesday to help prepare for the arrival of an international force supposed to bring order and foster reconstruction in the country. The officers are to prepare accommodation and logistics for a Polish-led force of about 7,000 in a zone of south-central Iraq, Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Eugeniusz Mleczak said. The force is to be operational by September. A visiting Russian security official said Tuesday that while his country would not send troops, it was willing to share information and expertise with Warsaw. Russia’s experience from long-standing political and business links with Iraq before the war could be useful to Poland, Russian Security Council chief Vladimir Rushailo said after a meeting with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski in Warsaw. Rushailo also said Russian security services could offer information and expertise to help Polish troops avoid attack by Iraqi groups opposed to the presence of foreign troops. (AP 101537 Jun 03)
  
• The United States should move quickly to create an Iraqi security force that is armed, paid, and under U.S. command, the leader of an Iraqi exile group says. The ratio should be about one American to 10 Iraqis, Ahmed Chalabi, head of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, said Tuesday. This can be done in six weeks with help from community leaders to weed out criminals and members of Saddam’s Baath Party, Chalabi told the Council on Foreign Relations, a private New York-based international advocacy organization. If the United States establishes an Iraqi security force, Chalabi said, it could then substantially reduce the number of American troops in Iraq. “They can actually provide order quickly,” he said, and also restore water, electricity and other public services. Chalabi added that he had “very credible information” that Saddam Hussein has been sighted moving in an arc north of Baghdad and is paying a bounty for every American soldier killed. (AP 110130 Jun 03)

BALKANS

• Kosovo’s top UN official urged the European Union on Tuesday to stick to its commitment to rebuild the province, as international officials struggle to combat continuing ethnic hatred and organized crime. Michael Steiner, Kosovo’s UN administrator, said despite recent ethnic violence between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, it was “absolutely decisive” that the EU “stay engaged in the Balkans as a whole.” EU leaders will review relations with the Balkans at their upcoming June 20-21 summit in Greece. Steiner, along with Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian president, Ibrahim Rugova, held talks with members of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee in an effort to drum up more EU support for their efforts. (AP 101658 Jun 03)
  

AFGHANISTAN

• Canada plans to open its first embassy in Afghanistan in January, Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said Tuesday. “The rebuilding of Afghanistan’s political and economic institutions in a secure environment is essential to the country’s long-term stability and key to ensuring that it does not revert to being a safe haven for terrorists,” Graham said at a news conference with Defense Minister John McCallum and International Cooperation Minister Susan Whelan. Defense Minister John McCallum confirmed that 1,800 Canadian troops would deploy in Afghanistan in August as part of the International Security Assistance Force. A second rotation, also 1,800 strong, would take over after six months, he added. (AP 102042 Jun 03)
  

OTHER NEWS

• The United States has warned the European Union that its promotion of the International Criminal Court is putting more strains on trans-Atlantic relations. “It would be very unfortunate if this issue were to create discord and disharmony” at the upcoming summit between the U.S. and the EU on June 25, a confidential note to sent to EU governments last week said. In the memorandum, the administration of U.S. President Bush accused the Europeans of trying to subvert U.S. efforts to protect Americans from prosecution by the court and said such interference must stop. “This will undercut all our efforts to repair and rebuild the trans-Atlantic relationship just as we are taking a turn for the better after a number of difficult months,” according to the note. (AP 110213 Jun 03)
  
• Thousands of Iranians took to the streets in the early hours of Wednesday, chanting anti-government slogans in largely peaceful protests after police surrounded a Tehran student dormitory, witnesses said. “Political prisoners must be freed,” the crowd shouted in a square near Tehran University. Other chants were directed against Iran’s clerical rulers. Residents said the chants were the most extreme since the unrest four years ago. Many people said they had gathered after hearing calls by U.S.-based Iranian exile satellite television channels to go to the campus after the student protests on Tuesday. The head of security at Tehran governor’s office said more protests might be expected. (Reuters 110100 GMT Jun 03)