Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

09 October 2003

NRF

• NATO leaders worked their way through a fictitious Middle East crisis to explore ways of using a new rapid-reaction force with global reach. The exercise, called Dynamic Response ‘07, kicked off two days of meetings of defense ministers and military chiefs. NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said afterward that Wednesday’s exercise showed alliance leaders that “crises that start small can finish big,” and with unexpected consequences. It also showed that NATO lacks troops that are ready for action on short notice, he said. “The blunt message from Colorado is going to be this: We need real, deployable soldiers, not paper armies,” Lord Robertson said at a news conference. The United States was represented by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Also participating were U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, who is the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and U.S. Navy Adm. Giambastiani, in charge of a new NATO command responsible for modernizing the alliance’s military capabilities. (AP 090157 Oct 03)

NATO

• Nine NATO nations have committed to establishing a multinational fleet of air-to-air refueling tankers in a bid to fill a key shortfall in the alliance’s military hardware. Belgium, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland and Portugal joined a Spanish-led working group to acquire the air-to-air refueling planes. (AP 090144 Oct 03)

AFGHANISTAN

• Four years after troops under former President Slobodan Milosevic fought U.S.-led forces, his successors agreed Wednesday to send troops to Afghanistan to assist the American military. The Supreme Defense Council, comprising the country’s top political and military officials, said in a statement that the Ministry of Defense was instructed to start training troops for the mission. (AP 081704 Oct 03)

BALKANS

• Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian premier said on Wednesday that he might stay away from the first official talks with Serbian government leaders since the Kosovo war, in defiance of Western pressure. Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi said he would only attend the opening session in Vienna on October 14 if the province’s Albanian-dominated parliament backed dialogue with Belgrade on practical issues, which it has so far failed to do. Rexhepi’s absence would be a blow to the UN-led administration of Kosovo. (Reuters 081517 GMT Oct 03)