Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

24 June 2003

NATO

• According to Berlin’s DDP, in an address to the “Impulse 21” security conference in Berlin Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Robertson urged European members of the Alliance to make greater defense efforts. Defense expenditures are stagnating or declining in most European countries, he reportedly complained. He noted critically that many European armies are hardly adapted to the new threats, which require worldwide operations. A related AFP dispatch quotes Lord Robertson warning that low budgets and unnecessary spending were undermining Europe’s security ambitions in Iraq and its efforts to combat terrorism. “In the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa and the war against terrorism,” he reportedly said, “we do not at present have the capacity to finish the jobs we have started. When I say ‘we,’ I mean we Europeans, because this is essentially a European problem.” According to the dispatch, he noted that NATO members had made important advances in recent years and that NATO’s command structure had also been streamlined, but stressed that these achievements were not enough, given the organization’s expanding global role. “It really matters now that we Europeans have demanding commitments from the Straits of Gibraltar through the Balkans, to Kabul and Baghdad, and down into the Congo,” the dispatch quotes Lord Robertson saying and warning: “If nothing were done, we face a growing disconnect between our collective aspirations in Europe, and our willingness and ability to deliver the forces needed to meet them.”
  
  
• Defense Minister Struck and his Polish counterpart Szmajdzinski announced Tuesday that Germany will supply 23 MiG-29 fighter aircraft to Poland in September to fulfill its role within NATO, reports AFP. According to the dispatch, Poland will be able to use until 2014 the second-hand Russian-designed single-seat jets.
  

News that NATO naval forces tipped off Greece to a ship in its waters carrying 680 tons of dynamite appears to have shifted attention to Operation Active Endeavour. This is typified by The Guardian, which writes: “NATO naval forces said they had tipped Greece off about the vessel, the Baltic Sky, and they were hunting 20 ‘suspect’ vessels that intelligence trackers say could be used by terror groups. A maritime anti-terror operation, Active Endeavour, began in October 2001 and covers the Mediterranean. Its activities have recently been stepped up, with suspicious vessels boarded and searched.”

ISAF

• Radio Afghanistan, June 23, quoted French Army Chief of Staff Gen. Bernard Thorette saying in a news conference in Kabul Monday that France will take specific measures to strengthen security in the northern regions of Afghanistan. Gen. Thorette spoke about specific measures envisaged by France and said the reconstruction of airport in Mazar-e-Sharif by France was a priority task, the report stressed.

A commentary in Berliner Zeitung warns against deploying German troops in Afghanistan’s provinces because of the danger this would constitute.
The Afghan government wants to expand ISAF’s mission beyond Kabul for understandable reasons: Hamid Karzai is president only on paper; his power, in fact, ends at Kabul’s limits. The United States also is believed to have requested an engagement of German soldiers in the provinces. But no matter how understandable those wishes may be, it is right at this time not to pursue them. In Kabul, ISAF can accomplish its mission only with the greatest efforts. Even the present deployment carries fatal risks. It would necessarily end in catastrophe if the military forces were to be scattered also over the provinces which are still in a state of war, the newspaper comments.
De Standaard quotes Lt. Gen. Van Remoortel, who is responsible for the Belgian army’s missions, stressing meanwhile that Belgium will not assume any additional tasks in Afghanistan. “Belgian troops will only protect the airport. That is what politicians decided.” In August, NATO will take over the ISAF command. Plans to expand the force and its radius of action are currently being discussed. The Belgians have already let it be known that they are not interested in assuming additional tasks. Belgium deliberately opts for supplying troops for protecting the airport only, the newspaper says, adding: “Gen. Van Remoortel explains that this has been a political decision, that the military themselves are quite willing to accept more dangerous tasks.”

BELGIUM-UNIVERSAL COMPETENCE LAW

• While Belgian media ponder whether changes in Belgium’s universal competence law will satisfy the Bush administration, The Independent writes that NATO officials reacted cautiously, saying U.S. legal experts would examine the text after it had been cleared by the Belgian Parliament. The Guardian says, however, that U.S. officials signaled Monday that the changes might defuse a row which had led to the threatened boycott of NATO’s Brussels headquarters and soured relations between Belgium and the United States.