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SHAPE
News Summary & Analysis
8
October 2003
ISAF
- According
to AP, Afghanistan’s government Wednesday welcomed
a decision by NATO that could pave the way for an expansion
of ISAF beyond Kabul. “Providing an additional
international security blanket over those parts of the country
that need them most would assist in the political and reconstruction
processes underway in the country,” the Afghan Foreign
Ministry reportedly said in a statement. In a related development,
AFP quotes the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte,
saying Tuesday the UN Security Council could have
a new resolution to approve an expansion of ISAF by the end
of October. According to the dispatch, he said it
was likely the resolution would be voted on before the Council
makes a one-week visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan beginning
Oct. 31 to assess the rebuilding effort and the peace process.
“We’re hoping between now and the end of the month
to have a new resolution. I’d expect action on that
before we go on our trip,” Negroponte reportedly said.
The New York Times reports meanwhile that senior Alliance
officials said Tuesday that NATO had decided in principle
to expand its force in Afghanistan beyond Kabul and final
approval could come as soon as this week. According
to the newspaper, the officials said it was possible that
the Alliance might announce an expanded role for ISAF
during an informal meeting of NATO defense ministers and military
chiefs iColorado Springs, which concludes Thursday.
NATO-DEFENSE
MINISTERS’ MEETING
- The
Financial Times writes that ahead of an informal meeting
of NATO defense ministers in Colorado Springs, Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld tried to portray himself as a committed Atlanticist,
a former U.S. ambassador to NATO during the height of the
Cold War who still believes the Alliance has a central role
in global security. In an interview, says the newspaper,
Rumsfeld repeatedly listed NATO accomplishments that
have come since he took office almost three years ago, from
a complete restructuring of the Alliance’s command structure,
to the establishment of a new rapid reaction force, to NATO’s
first military efforts outside Europe, taking control of Afghan
peacekeeping. “It says people do believe in
the Alliance and it does have a value prospectively, which
we certainly are convinced of,” the newspaper quotes
Rumsfeld saying. Regarding Iraq, the article adds, Rumsfeld
insisted that divisions that almost rent the Alliance apart
in the lead-up to war were being mended, pointing to the participation
of a majority of NATO countries in Iraqi peacekeeping as well
as NATO’s role in supporting Poland’s command
of an entire international division “With respect to
Iraq, it’s interesting to me that, there again, NATO
stepped forward and has been supporting the Polish division,”
he reportedly noted. According to the article, he said he
was not about to approach NATO with requests for more assistance,
but did not rule out the possibility that the Alliance’s
role could evolve similarly to the way it did in Afghanistan.
The newspaper, which stresses that Rumsfeld “appears
genuinely to believe that the new projects the Alliance has
undertaken, particularly the new NATO response force, could
reshape the Alliance,” further quotes him saying: “The
advantage, I believe, may ultimately prove to be not simply
the existence of a NATO capability that has the ability to
go do something useful in the world but also the fact in developing
it and working with it and exercising it and making it responsive,
we will back those transformational aspects into their respective
militaries of the NATO countries, just as we’re trying
to do in the United States.” Elsewhere, the newspaper
writes that Rumsfeld is inviting his fellow NATO defense ministers
to take part in the Alliance’s first ever ministerial
war gaming about how they might use the NRF once it is up
and running. Noting, however, that it is not known now what
fictional crisis Rumsfeld plans to spring on his NATO counterparts,
the article argues that the precise scenario is irrelevant,
because Rumsfeld’s point is just to lift the imagination
of NATO defense ministers to contemplate future threats outside
the area of the Alliance’s traditional operations.
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