Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

7 July 2003

IRAQ

• A U.S. soldier was killed and four were wounded in new and increasingly bold attacks on occupying forces in Iraq as a top U.S. politician said intelligence suggested Saddam Hussein was probably alive. The killing backed suggestions that attacks on U.S. forces were becoming more sophisticated and targeted. U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts told CNN on Sunday intelligence reports indicated there was now about a 70-30 chance Saddam was alive. (Reuters 070335 GMT Jul 03)
  
  
• President Pervez Musharraf said on Saturday that Pakistan had not committed to sending up to 10,000 troops to Iraq, and that any deployment would be better if it was part of a force including other Muslim countries. He has come under sharp criticism from the political opposition and commentators in Pakistan for offering to send soldiers to a fellow Muslim country occupied by the United States and Britain. President Musharraf said he would look into the possibility of Pakistani troops serving in Iraq under the umbrella either of the United Nations, the Organisation of Islamic Conference or the Gulf Cooperation Council. (Reuters 050823 GMT Jul 03)

AFGHANISTAN

• An advance team of NATO troops is due in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday to prepare for the alliance’s first military operation in Asia, a spokesman for Kabul’s peacekeeping force said. The team of computer experts will set up a network for NATO, which takes over command of the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul next month. (Reuters 060915 GMT Jul 03)

BALKANS

• The president of Macedonia (sic) has asked the European Union to extend its military mission in his Balkan republic beyond September when the current mandate expires, the president’s office said on Saturday. In a letter Friday to Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy and security chief, President Boris Trajkovski said an international military presence in Macedonia (sic) is still needed although public safety has improved significantly since the end of an ethnic Albanian insurgency two years ago. There was no immediate response from EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. (AP 051237 Jul 03)
  
  
• Accusing the UN war crimes tribunal of political bias, the justice minister said Friday that Serbia would put a former ethnic Albanian rebel leader on trial in a Serbian court. Hashim Thaci, a leading politician in Kosovo and a former rebel leader in the 1998-99 war in the southern Serbian province, will be tried in a Belgrade court on charges he committed atrocities against ethnic Serbs during that conflict, Justice Minister Vladan Batic said. “We will try him in absentia,” Batic said. “Then, we will see how the international community will react.” Batic accused the UN tribunal based in The Hague of showing anti-Serb bias for so far having failed to indict Thaci. “There are obviously some political reasons, rather then legal, why Hashim Thaci is not being indicted” by The Hague court, Batic added. He said that the Serbian government had handed over to The Hague tribunal some 40,000 pages of witnesses testimonies, photographs, video and audio tapes and other evidence to back an indictment against Thaci. He claimed that the evidence is enough to charge him. (AP 041239 Jul 03)
  
  
• Serbia and Montenegro’s president hinted on Sunday that the country could agree to exempt U.S. citizens from prosecution by the new international criminal court, but only in return for more U.S. aid and other concessions, a news agency reported. President Svetozar Marovic told Belgrade’s Beta news agency on Sunday that the decision should only be made after “serious considerations,” suggesting that the impoverished union should use the issue to seek more financial concessions from Washington. “We can demand much more than a certain amount of military aid,” President Marovic added. (AP 061711 Jul 03)

WAR ON TERRORISM

• The leaders of four Central Asian countries agreed Saturday to improve coordination in fighting terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking. “No state can fight this evil on its own. We need a common legal foundation so that the fight (against terrorism) will be on the same level in all our countries,” said Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev after talks with the presidents of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the Kazakh commercial capital Almaty. The four leaders had gathered to discuss cooperation within the Central Asian Cooperation Organization, a regional grouping set up in 2001. (AP 051346 Jul 03)

LIBERIA

• A U.S. military team was due in Liberia on Monday to look at how best to bring stability to the West African country as President Taylor took another step towards bowing out. The 20-member “humanitarian assistance survey team” is seen as a possible precursor to a larger force, which the United States is considering. U.S. President Bush, due to leave for Africa on Monday, has not yet decided whether to send peacekeepers to the country. The 20-member team, accompanied for security by 15 Marines, took off for Liberia early on Monday from a U.S. military base in Rota, southern Spain, a U.S. army spokesman said. (Reuters 070027 GMT Jul 03)