Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

10 September 2003

AFGHANISTAN

• NATO, responding to widespread calls to improve security in Afghanistan, will study extending its peacekeeping mission beyond Kabul, Secretary-General Robertson said on Tuesday in Brussels. German Foreign Minister Fischer and U.S. Defence Secretary Rumsfeld added their voices this month to the calls for NATO to expand its mission. “You can’t have a suggestion made by the German foreign minister and the American secretary of defence without taking that seriously,” Lord Robertson added. He said NATO would also be in contact with the United Nations for consultations on changing ISAF’s mandate. Diplomats said it was not clear when NATO ambassadors would ask military authorities to provide advice on expanding ISAF. The call could come at Wednesday’s weekly meeting of the North Atlantic Council. But the ambassadors may wait until after a seminar with experts on Afghanistan and a brainstorming session among themselves next week. (Reuters 091811 GMT Sep 03)

IRAQ

• Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said on Tuesday that Arab states would not send troops to Iraq, where occupying U.S. forces face almost daily attacks. “It’s not accepted and it’s not logical to send Arab troops to protect the occupation forces or to take part in the occupation of an Arab state,” Moussa said at the end of a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, added that the subject “was not discussed at all” during the meeting, in which Iraq’s newly appointed foreign minister took part. (Reuters 091958 GMT Sep 03)
  
  
• The U.S. military’s top officer said on Tuesday that 20,000 Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers now in Iraq and nearby are being ordered to serve there for up to a full year just as regular troops do. The warning to Congress by Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a fresh signal of the growing stress on U.S. forces from deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. “We are a nation at war, and we have to do what it takes in this case to win,” Gen. Myers said in response to questions about a report in the Washington Post that the Army had adopted the one-year Iraq tour policy for the Guard and Reserve. (Reuters 091810 GMT Sep 03)

OTHER NEWS

• As Turkey weighs sending peacekeepers to Iraq, a U.S. delegation heads for Ankara this week for consultations on an issue that could affect the troop decision - Turkey’s demand that Washington crack down on PKK Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. Turkish officials do not expect the PKK issue to be fully resolved before the troop issue is decided but they want the “ball to start rolling.” The American team representing the State Department and other U.S. agencies is due in the Turkish capital later in the week, U.S. officials said. Turkey’s foreign minister said Ankara would decide this month whether to send peacekeepers, instead of October as expected. Henri Barkey, a former State Department official and now a professor at Lehigh University in Philadelphia., said before cracking down on the PKK, the United States would like more time for rebels to take advantage of a recently enacted Turkish amnesty law. Meanwhile, representatives of the new U.S.-created Iraqi governing council are to visit Turkey for the first time on Thursday, U.S. officials added. (Reuters 091857 GMT Sep 03)