Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

20 June 2003

NATO

• The Virginian-Pilot reports that in a ceremony at Norfolk Thursday, marking the decommissioning of SACLANT and the start of Allied Command Transformation (ACT), Royal Navy Adm. Sir Ian Forbes, who has served as SACLANT commander for the past eight months, handed off to Gen. Jones. Adm. Giambastiani, who also serves as commander of the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, then assumed command of ACT. “This is no longer an Alliance content to wait for something to happen in our backyard,” the newspaper quotes SACEUR saying at the ceremony. The article adds: “Gen. Jones said NATO forces are preparing to go into Afghanistan…. A successful deployment was made into Turkey, and NATO forces continue their work in the Balkans. There has been a successful operation in the Mediterranean in which naval inspected had led to a 50 percent decrease in illegal immigration.” Italy’s ANSA quotes NATO Deputy Secretary General Rizzi saying in Brussels Thursday that ACT will be a link between the U.S. and European military forces. Its scope will be to lead the transformation of NATO’s military capability to enable the Alliance to confront crises and future threats to member countries wherever they may come from, Mr. Rizzi reportedly said.

BALKANS

• “Arrest the fugitives, so Bosnia can move on,” ICTY chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte charges in a contribution the New York Times. “I know, roughly, where the most wanted fugitives from the war in Bosnia are hiding. And it seems almost banal to be calling attention, yet again, to the fact that these fugitives, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, are still at large…. Mladic is lurking in Serbia, right under the noses of the Belgrade authorities. Karadzic is shuffling about within a corridor of rugged terrain in eastern Bosnia, sometimes in disguise, always poised to dash across the zigzagging border into Serbia and Montenegro, always protected by men who are themselves implicated in the Srebrenica massacre,” del Ponte writes and adds: “If I know this much about where these men are hiding, it is clear that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the authorities in Serbia and Montenegro know more. They are duty-bound to arrest and extradite these men, as well as other fugitives of lesser repute. The time has come to summon the will and bring them to justice.”

UNIVERSAL COMPETENCE LAW

• Reuters reports Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel became the latest public figure to fall out of Belgium’s controversial human rights law Friday when an opposition party said it was filing a suit against him. Michel reportedly stands accused by a small opposition party for approving arms shipments to Nepal.

OTHER NEWS

• AP reports Ukraine’s Defense Minister Shkidchenko resigned Friday, just two months after President Kuchma sacked the commander in chief of the navy for neglecting his duties. According to the dispatch, Shkidchenko submitted his resignation during a hearing on the results of inspections of military units’ combat readiness and the use of state funds, military facilities, buildings and land occupied by the armed forces on the Crimean Peninsula. Neither the Defense Minister nor the presidential administration could be reached for immediate comment.
  
  
• According to The Daily Telegraph, Britain is to propose a radical reform of the UN Security Council which would expand membership from 15 to 20 countries as part of an initiative to avoid a repetition of the deep splits during the Iraq crisis. The proposals will reportedly include doubling the number of permanent members from the existing five—Britain, America, Russia, France and China—to include Germany, India, Japan, one Latin American country and one African country. Its non-permanent membership would be increased to 25, but the existing five permanent members would retain their veto rights which would not be extended to any new members.