Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

01 October 2003

NATO

• U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld intends to put his European and Canadian colleagues through their paces next week when he hosts a NATO meeting in the Western U.S. city of Colorado Springs. Instead of the usual round-the-table debate, Rumsfeld plans to open a NATO defense ministers' meeting with a crisis management exercise where the allies have to use rapid response forces to deal with security threats, the U.S. ambassador to NATO said Tuesday. "It's the first time in our memory that we do it with ministers," Ambassador Nicholas Burns told reporters at NATO headquarters. Defense ministers and military top brass from the 19 NATO allies and seven former East bloc nations that are due to join the alliance next year, will gather for the two-day meeting opening Oct. 8 in the Colorado city. Topics will range from the situation in Iraq and NATO's role in Afghanistan, to the U.S.-led drive to modernize the alliance's armed forces and the fight against terrorism. The exercise planned for the ministers in Colorado Springs will focus on a planned rapid response force of 20,000 which NATO is setting up to spearhead its operations around the world. First elements of the elite force are scheduled to become operational a week after the Colorado meeting. Burns said the response force would have a "revolutionary impact" on NATO's ability to project power far beyond its borders, as it focuses on the international terrorist threat. (AP 302137 Sep 03)
  
  
• A Belgian court on Tuesday found a Tunisian-born former professional soccer player guilty of planning to attack a NATO air base on behalf of al Qaeda. The Brussels court convicted Nizar ben Abdelaziz Trabelsi, who played for German Bundesliga team Fortuna Duesseldorf in the 1980s, of plotting to blow himself up at Belgium's Kleine Brogel base, which houses U.S. soldiers and is suspected of containing nuclear weapons. Prosecutors said Trabelsi, 33, met al Qaeda militant leader Osama bin Laden several times in Afghanistan before accepting the planned suicide mission. He was arrested in Brussels after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. (Reuters 300958 GMT Sep 03)

AFGHANISTAN

• Plans to expand the NATO-led peacekeeping operation in Afghanistan to cities beyond the capital Kabul could involve thousands of extra troops, putting new strains on thinly stretched allied forces, officials cautioned Tuesday. NATO's military experts presented a range of military options Monday for extending the force of 5,500, which operates under a U.N. mandate and is currently restricted to operations in and around Kabul. Although the plans remained confidential, officials at NATO headquarters said they could involve 2,000 to 10,000 more peacekeepers fanning out to major provincial cities. Germany's ambassador to the U.N., Gunter Pleuger, said Monday the expanded force could operate in eight key regional cities to help stabilize the country ahead of elections next year. NATO officials said more cities could be included later. NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson has written to governments ahead of an October meeting of alliance defense ministers in Colorado asking them to take a hard look at the state of their deployable forces. NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Gen. James L. Jones told Newsweek magazine this week that France "has probably the most expeditionary army in Europe. And writ large," he said, adding in particular that it was "good at peacekeeping." (AP 302016 Sep 03)

IRAQ

• The United States said on Tuesday it was flexible about a timetable for Iraqis to write a new constitution and it was up to Iraqis to set the pace. But the Iraqi group working on the new constitution said it would be impossible to complete the job within six months because of deep disagreements over major issues, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher indicated that Washington was prepared to accommodate a slower timetable. The Washington Post said the constitutional group was split over the role of Islamic law, the form of a new political system and how to select delegates to a constitutional convention. According to the newspaper, Iraqi leaders said the constitution could not be drafted in less than a year. Boucher also said he expected the Bush administration to have a new draft U.N. resolution on Iraq ready this week. (Reuters 302133 GMT Sep 03)