Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

30 July 2003

NATO

• A group of Russian officers will start working at the Partnership Coordination Cell on July 30, wrote Russian news agency Itar Tass, July 29. The Partnership Coordination Cell unites 46 member countries of the “Partnership for Peace” program, a Russian press delegation, including Itar Tass correspondents, has reportedly been told by representatives of the NATO strategic command in Mons, Belgium. This will be the second group of Russian officers to work at the Alliance’s military headquarters on a permanent basis, adds the dispatch. The first group, continues the report, has been operating in Mons for several years ensuring the NATO-Russia interaction in carrying out peacekeeping operations in the Balkans. The NATO officers and generals, comments the report, told the Russian reporters about large-scale reforms in the Alliance’s military structures. Their chief objective, concludes the agency, is to adjust NATO to the new threats and challenges deriving from terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the need to settle regional crises. According to Kyrgyz news agency Kabar, July 28, a training course entitled “The fight against terrorism and drug trafficking” under the NATO Partnership for Peace program was launched Monday at the Bishkek higher military school. The training, says the report, will be held by a mobile group from the Ankara-based NATO training center, which is made up of representatives of Turkey’s armed forces and police department. The main goal of the four-day course, is to train Kyrgyz servicemen to apply advanced techniques for combating terrorist groups and drug trafficking. Armenian news agency Arminfo, July 29, reported that the commander of NATO Joint Command South, Lt. Gen. Antonio Quintana, expressed his appreciation and gratitude to the Armenian Defense Minister for the efforts made by the Armenian authorities to make Cooperative Best Effort-2003 military exercises, held in Armenia in June, a success.

IRAQ

• An AP dispatch, carried by The Guardian, reports that the U.S. has agreed to provide transportation and other support for 9,000 Polish peacekeepers heading to Iraq. A Defense Ministry spokesman allegedly said the U.S. agreed to provide airlift for most of the 9,000-person unit to Iraq, additional equipment, camp construction, medical care and food. Poland’s government has reportedly said it can afford only one-third of the Iraq mission’s annual cost of 90 million dollars. The Polish mission, concludes the dispatch, is scheduled to start in September.

AFGHANISTAN

• The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Myers, while visiting Afghanistan during a trip to the Middle East and Asia, told reporters that coalition forces in Iraq were gathering critical intelligence on Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network and the Iraq conflict had not diverted resources away from the war on terror, says an AP dispatch. “In fact, just the opposite, we are getting very good intelligence from operations in Iraq on the Al Qaeda and it’s been very helpful in understanding the network and tracking down some of the leadership,” he is quoted stating, adding: “What we’re doing here in Afghanistan and what we’re doing in Iraq is in many cases the same thing. We’re denying terrorists sanctuaries where they can operate and where they can train and we’re denying terrorists getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction, and that’s what this is all about.”

MIDDLE EAST

• An op-ed in the Financial Times observes that although after the visits to Washington by the Palestinian and Israeli prime ministers the conventional wisdom is that the “road map” for peace in the Middle East is on track, progress is indeed built on fragile foundations: the temporary ceasefire of extremist Palestinian groups. If the U.S., Europe and others want to maintain the momentum behind the road map, they will have to make a greater investment, politically and military, speculates the article. They should propose that a NATO-led security force moves into the West Bank and Gaza with the aim to support a fragile ceasefire and help break the current impasse in the security negotiations. NATO, adds the editorial, has peacekeeping experience in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan and is constantly looking for ways to prove its continuing relevance. Therefore, the idea of a NATO-led peacekeeping force is slowly gathering support. NATO defense ministers discussed the proposal in Madrid last month, recalls the paper, and NATO has already brought Israeli and Palestinian security officials to Kosovo to show them how a force would work. The article also argues that the idea by some Europeans that the EU should send peacekeepers would be rejected by Israel: to be credible, it has to be a NATO-led force to which other countries contribute. In any case, concludes the editorial, getting NATO involved in Middle East peacemaking would be a triumph for Europe. It would show the Alliance can reconcile European and American priorities and that the Alliance is as good at promoting peace accords as it is at cleaning up after U.S.-led interventions.