Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

26 September 2003

IRAQ

• The UN decided yesterday to withdraw almost all of its remaining international personnel from Iraq within 48 hours because of fears for their safety, undermining claims by the U.S. that coalition forces are making progress in curbing the violence in the country, writes The Independent. Fred Eckhard, a spokesman for the UN Secretary general, reportedly said: “This is not an evacuation, it’s just a further downsizing,” but, the daily observes, he also made it clear that only a symbolic handful of the UN’s core staff would remain in Iraq. The news, points put the daily, came on the same day that President Putin declared in his address to the General Assembly that the UN should be granted “direct participation” in the rebuilding of Iraq, and several world leaders have made the same appeal in New York this week. Moreover, continues the paper, the redeployment happens at precisely the time nations on the Security Council are debating over a U.S.-sponsored resolution to give an expanded role to the UN in the reconstruction effort in addition to mandating a multi-national force in Iraq. A related AP dispatch reports that as the Security Council grappled with a new resolution on Iraq, it was clear that many countries wanted the UN to have a more prominent role, especially in overseeing Iraq’s political transition, than the U.S. has offered so far. But, argues the news agency, if security is not improved, Secretary General Annan will not be able to allow the return, in significant numbers, of international staff needed to oversee more than the minimum humanitarian needs, and a larger UN role possibly helping with a new constitution and elections would be out of the question.

NATO

• Croatian press agency HINA, Sept. 25, reports the Croatian government adopted an annual program for 2003-2004 within the Action Plan for membership of NATO at its closed session on Thursday. The program, reportedly says a statement issued after the closed session, is a document based on which NATO would evaluate Croatia’s progress in the adjustment process. The program is divided in five sections: political and economic issues, defense and military, the resources issues, security issues, and legal issues.

BALKANS

• Bosnia’s Serb, Muslim and Croat leaders late Thursday reached an agreement aimed at establishing a unified command for the country’s armed forces, the first step toward joining NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, comments an AP report, Sept. 25. Under the accord, the armies of Bosnia’s two highly-independent entities, the Croat-Muslim Federation and the Republika Srpska, will have a central command headquarters, the same flag and uniform but will remain ethnically distinct. The reform, stresses the agency, is key to securing Bosnia’s entry into NATO’s Partnership for Peace program launched in 1994 as a mechanism for building trust between NATO states and countries that had been part of the Soviet-era Warsaw Pact. In a related dispatch, Bosnia-Herzegovina Federation News Agency FENA, Sept. 25, writes that members of the NATO Military Committee who arrived Thursday in Sarajevo on a two-day visit to the country, expressed their support for the proposals on the defense reform and called on Bosnia-Herzegovina officials to endorse the report by the defense reform commission as soon as possible. Deputy Chairman of the Military Committee Vice Admiral Malcolm Fages reportedly said NATO was looking forward the day when Bosnia-Herzegovina would join the Partnership for Peace, and when its armed forces would take part in the program’s activities. SFOR commander Gen. William Ward was quoted saying: “The door of the Partnership for Peace is open to Bosnia-Herzegovina and we hope that the Bosnia-Herzegovina officials will take the necessary steps to meet all the criteria.”

ISAF

• NATO will decide "in a few weeks" whether to deploy international peacekeepers to Afghanistan's provinces, its chief George Robertson said Friday, amid warnings that a Taliban resurgence and factional fighting is crippling rebuilding efforts outside Kabul, says an AFP report. "We've listened very carefully to the voices of those who've said that bringing security to Kabul alone is not enough," Lord Robertson said on a brief visit to the Afghan capital. Robertson said one option was that ISAF could become involved in US-led civil-military teams helping with reconstruction work in the provinces. Robertson said NATO intends to repeat its Balkans success in Afghanistan, the alliance's first-ever deployment outside its traditional arena of Europe.