Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

22 September 2003

NATO

• Nineteen nations will take part in an unprecedented exercise in Romania next month to test their response to a terrorist attack with radioactive “dirty bombs,” NATO said on Friday. The event underlines post-September 11 concern within the U.S.-dominated alliance and among its partner nations that terrorists could get their hands on low-level nuclear material. NATO said in a statement that the October 7-10 exercise in Pitesti, Romania, would focus on the consequences and emergency response to a radiological terrorist attack, including medical treatment and the psychological impact. Romania, which organised the exercise as part of its preparations to join NATO next year, will field 1,300 personnel. (Reuters 191547 GMT Sep 03)
  
  
• The United States will close two of its three army storage sites in the Netherlands next year, the Dutch Defence Ministry said on Friday. The closure of two storage sites at Vriezenveen and Brunssum, plus cutbacks at the third facility in Eygelshoven, will cost around 400 civilians jobs, the Dutch Defence Ministry and U.S. Department of Defense said in separate statements. “These facilities in the Netherlands were identified as excess to the needs of the Army in Europe for military reasons,” the U.S. Department of Defense said. (Reuters 191544 GMT Sep 03)

AFGHANISTAN

• Afghan President Karzai has approved a long-awaited reshuffle in the Defense Ministry, viewed as a crucial step to disarm powerful warlords and build a viable national army, Afghan officials said Saturday. He sacked the army chief of staff, Gen. Mohammed Asef Delawar, and appointed Gen. Bismillah Khan as his successor. In an effort to make the ministry more ethnically diverse, President Karzai also named Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, a Pashtun, to be first deputy. Earlier on Saturday, the Canadian Gen. Andrew Leslie, deputy commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping force, said he was disappointed that warlords had failed to move some of their fighters and heavy weapons out of Kabul, in violation of a 2001 Western-brokered deal. “I don’t understand why they (militias) would want to have tanks in Kabul ... you don’t use tanks to arrest criminals,” he added. (AP 201652 Sep 03)

IRAQ

• French President Chirac proposed the United States transfer symbolic sovereignty to Iraqis soon and cede real power in six to nine months. In an interview with the New York Times as he left to attend the United Nations General Assembly, President Chirac said he had no plans to veto the U.S.-drafted measure but might not support it in its current form, indicating he would abstain. The Bush administration has circulated draft proposals but has not formally introduced a resolution, which U.S. officials said was undergoing revisions. President Chirac proposed a system similar to that in Afghanistan, where an interim government has full sovereignty until elections and the United States and other nations send troops in an often-unsuccessful attempt to keep the peace. He added that if the United States could agree on empowering Iraqis soon, France would help train Iraqi soldiers and police, but he did not promise any French troops. (Reuters 220115 GMT Sep 03)
  
  
• Europe’s Big Three powers failed to resolve differences on Iraq at a weekend summit, casting doubt on whether talks the United States this week will make progress on a UN resolution to rebuild the country. Despite a show of unity on European issues, the leaders of France and Germany stood firm on Iraq in the talks with Britain’s Tony Blair, demanding a fast handover of power to the Iraqis. The disagreements with U.S. ally Blair were so evident that analysts said meetings in New York this week between President Bush, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder will fail to break much ice. (Reuters 211145 GMT Sep 03)
  
  
• The United States has asked Turkey, Pakistan and South Korea to send up to 40,000 troops total to Iraq as part of a global U.S. drive for help to secure the country still wracked by violence, officials from those nations told The Associated Press. In Moscow, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has said sending Russian troops isn’t yet on the agenda. But his failure to rule it out has prompted speculation Russia could participate. (AP 200003 Sep 03)
  
  
• Iraq’s former defence minister surrendered to U.S. forces on Friday. Sultan Hashim Ahmed turned himself over to U.S. troops in the northern city of Mosul and was met by Major General David Petraeus. The mediator, local human rights official Dawood Bagistani, told a news conference he had received assurances that Ahmed would be removed from the list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis and would not be charged with war crimes. But the U.S. Army said only that he would be treated “decently and humanely.” (Reuters 192226 GMT Sep 03)

EU

• European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana was quoted on Friday saying a United Nations mandate and timetable for handing power to the Iraqi people were conditions for deeper EU involvement in Iraq’s reconstruction. “We hope that soon, at the latest by the donors conference at the end of October in Madrid, there will be a United Nations mandate,” Solana was quoted as saying in an advance copy of an interview with Saturday’s edition of Die Welt newspaper. Germany and France are at odds with Britain over a European military planning headquarters that Berlin and Paris want created alongside NATO. Solana, a former NATO secretary-general, said he would bet on tensions easing. He was not worried that EU ambitions to forge a common foreign and security policy would “implode.” “For some operations, such as in Macedonia (sic), we will need recourse to NATO capabilities. For others, such as in Bunia in Congo, where the EU is acting alone we will need a lead nation,” he said. “Perhaps there will be a third type of military operation. In this case we will find a way of setting up an EU headquarters for operations which NATO is not involved in,” he said. Solana added the EU would be able to take over peacekeeping operations in Bosnia from NATO “before 2005,” acknowledging criticism of an earlier 2004 target. (Reuters 191640 GMT Sep 03)