Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

23 July 2003

IRAQ

• Saddam Hussein’s sons Odai and Qusai died in a blaze of gunfire and rockets when U.S. forces, acting on a tip from an Iraqi informant, stormed a palatial villa in Mosul. The U.S. military claimed their deaths will blunt Iraqi resistance to the American occupation. (AP 230334 Jul 03)
  
  
• The U.S. Army has approved a plan for rotating fresh troops into Iraq and bringing home those who have served for nearly a year. The plan calls for maintaining troops at their current level of about 145,000 by rotating in one-for-one replacements, defense officials said Tuesday in Washington. The troop rotation plan has been sent to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for review and details were to be announced on Wednesday. The plan calls for new troops to serve one-year tours, one official said, commenting on condition of anonymity. (AP 222013 Jul 03)

IRAN

• A Russian diplomat warned the United States against attacking Iran, saying in an interview published on Tuesday that the use of force against Tehran “would have more serious consequences than in the case of Iraq.” Russia cannot rule out that the United States, which angered the Kremlin by invading Iraq without support from the UN Security Council, might use force against another country, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said in an interview with the newspaper Vremya Novostei that was posted on the Foreign Ministry’s Web site. He emphasized Russia’s traditionally close ties with Iran and said that “today too, Iran is for us the key country in the region.” He said Russia sees “no clear proof” of the U.S. claim that Iran supports terrorism. (AP 221751 Jul 03)

EU

• Germany’s foreign minister called for a “single voice” in the European Union’s defense and security policy on Tuesday, appealing to diplomats to push for closer unity among member states to boost the organization’s clout in global affairs. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said that the war in Iraq had shown that the EU had “simply not been prepared for such a crisis.” Germany has been at the forefront of countries pressing for more cohesion in the EU so the organization can balance the might of the United States. “The Iraqi crisis showed that the EU’s common foreign policy did not work,” Fischer said while speaking to an annual meeting of ambassadors at the Hungarian Foreign Ministry in Budapest. (AP 221306 Jul 03)
  
  
• The European Union told Serbian President Marovic on Tuesday that it was troubled by the feuding among once-united reformers in Serbia which hopes to embark on the road to EU membership. “Our message on the infighting was quite strong,” said an EU official after the meeting in Brussels. “For us, it is disappointing to see this from parties which agree on reform and on integration with the European Union.” Officials said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was “mild in tone” with President Marovic but left no doubt he was deeply concerned about the political climate. An influential Western think-tank, the International Crisis Group, said last week that Serbian reforms were stalling because of resistance from the police and the army. (Reuters 221404 GMT Jul 03)

LIBERIA

• Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan are trying to map out a way to revive a cease-fire in Liberia so peacekeeping troops can be sent in. West African defense chiefs, along with American diplomats, were in Dakar, Senegal, discussing the force’s composition and deployment schedule. Some U.S. defense officials said President Bush was inclined to send in a small contingent – perhaps several hundred Marines - only enough to provide command and communications support for an African peacekeeping force. A senior U.S. official told The Associated Press that President Bush was almost certain to delay a decision on U.S. troops until he had a hard commitment from the West African countries. (AP 222125 Jul 03)