Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

03 October 2003

NATO

• NATO’s top official, Lord Robertson, urged Macedonia (sic) on Thursday to redouble membership efforts, saying the alliance’s “doors remain open” for the troubled Balkan country. “Macedonia (sic) is not a future trouble spot, but it is a future full member of NATO,” said Lord Robertson after talks with President Boris Trajkovski and Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski in Skopje. (AP 021614 Oct 03)

ESDP

• Italy has suggested creating a mobile team of planners for EU military operations to end a row between the United States and four European states who want a headquarters independent of NATO, diplomats said on Thursday. The proposal of the European Union’s current president foresees a pool of about 40 officers rotating around national military headquarters. The plan will be presented at a meeting of the 15-nation bloc’s defence ministers in Rome on Friday. (Reuters 021505 GMT Oct 03)

IRAQ

• UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told Security Council members on Thursday not to give the world body a political role in Iraq under terms put down in the U.S.-drafted resolution, UN officials said. While not rejecting outright the American plans for the UN to help with the political process, Annan made clear at a lunch with council members the mandate could not be implemented properly while the U.S. occupation continued. He made clear the resolution had not followed his recommendation of setting up an interim Iraqi government before a constitution was written and new elections were held. (Reuters 022207 GMT Oct 03)
  
  
• Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said on Thursday he wanted parliament to decide “rapidly” whether to send Turkish peacekeeping troops to Iraq to help Washington maintain security there. “We want a decision from the assembly rapidly on sending the troops,” Tayyip Erdogan told the local news channel NTV. He said Turkey could approve the deployment within 10 to 15 days as long as the government gives the green light for a parliamentary vote. (Reuters 021715 GMT Oct 03)

ISAF

• A land mine hidden in a sandy track in the Afghan capital exploded, killing two Canadian peacekeepers and wounding three others. Thursday’s blast came 24 hours after engineers checked the road for explosives and found nothing. However, officials said it was too early to determine whether the explosion was caused by an old land mine or one laid recently in an effort to target international peacekeepers. (AP 030049 Oct 03)

BALKANS

• Seven ethnic Albanians have been arrested for allegedly killing a police officer, Serbian police said on Thursday. Ethnic Albanian political leaders protested the detentions. The seven suspects were arrested this week in the ethnically tense region bordering Kosovo province, following months of investigation into the Feb. 4 killing of an ethnic Albanian member of Serbia’s police. The seven arrested include four other ethnic Albanian police officers, two civilians and a minor. They are also accused of planting a nail bomb last month with 600 grams of explosives in a Bujanovac school - found and defused before it could go off - and of illegal possession of weapons. (AP 021921 Oct 03)

RUSSIA

• President Putin said Thursday that Russia can modernize its aging strategic arsenal and maintain its military might for years ahead, relying on stockpiles of Soviet-built missiles (SS-19 Stiletto) that he boasted are capable of overcoming any missile defense system. The deputy chief of Russia’s General Staff, Col.-Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, told reporters that each of the stockpiled SS-19 missiles that President Putin mentioned can carry up to 10 nuclear warheads and remain on duty “at least through the mid-2030s.” Separately, the Defense Ministry warned that Russia will have to radically change its military reform plans – and its nuclear strategy - if NATO fails to shed what it called an “anti-Russian orientation.” President Putin’s meeting with military officials focused on a new defense ministry document that outlined potential threats for Russia’s security and set tasks for the military. The document mentioned new, friendly ties with the United States and NATO, but noted that the alliance had failed to remove “anti-Russian components” from its military plans and political statements. “If NATO is preserved as a military alliance with its existing offensive military doctrine, this will demand a radical reconstruction of Russian military planning and the principles of construction of the Russian armed forces, including changes in Russian nuclear strategy,” the ministry said. Col.-Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky refused to elaborate on what these changes could be, but voiced concern about NATO’s continuing “anti-Russian orientation” and what he vaguely described as NATO plans to “lower the threshold of using nuclear weapons.” (AP 021641 Oct 03)
  
  
• Russia’s defence minister said on Thursday that his nuclear-armed country stuck by its doctrine of making a pre-emptive military strike beyond its borders if its interests and those of its allies required it. Obliquely referring to trouble-spots in Iraq and Afghanistan, Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov broadcast a reassuring message to Russians, saying: “Not one of the conflict situations beyond the territory of Russia represents a direct military threat to the security of the country.” But he added that today’s different security challenges required varied military responses. “We cannot absolutely rule out even pre-emptive use of force if the interests of Russia and obligations to its allies require it,” he added. He did not specify the allies he had in mind. But Moscow in the past has voiced similar support to those in ex-Soviet Central Asia vulnerable to fundamentalist Islamic movements. (Reuters 021610 GMT Oct 03)