Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

14 October 2003

AFGHANISTAN

• The UN Security Council has given a green light to NATO to expand its peacekeeping mission throughout Afghanistan to help improve security, a move long sought by the Afghan government. But so far only Germany has offered more troops. U.S. Ambassador Negroponte, the council’s president for October, said the United States “proceeded cautiously on this ... in part because there was an absence of countries who were willing to undertake missions outside of Kabul.” (AP 140300 Oct 03)

IRAQ

• NATO is unlikely to become a formal player in keeping the peace in Iraq, even though key members like the United States and Britain and alliance newcomer Poland already have forces in the country, the trans-Atlantic organization’s head said on Monday in Geneva. “At the moment, we foresee no role for NATO in Iraq, until the member nations deliberately put it on the table - something they have not done yet,” Secretary-General Lord Robertson told a meeting of diplomats and defense experts at Geneva’s Center for Security Policy, a think tank financed by the government of Switzerland. (AP 131732 Oct 03)
  
  
• The European Union agreed on Monday to make a modest donation to help rebuild Iraq and Britain pledged new efforts to clinch a UN resolution on the country’s future before next week’s donor conference in Madrid. Foreign ministers set a contribution of 200 million euros from EU coffers for 2003-04. In a joint statement, they called for a realistic timetable for handing over power to the Iraqi people and added a clause insisting on “a strong and vital UN role.” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told his colleagues that London would contribute an additional 375 million euros in new money for reconstruction over the next two full years. “As far as the Netherlands are concerned there will be no extras,” Dutch Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said. “We have already pledged quite a lot in emergency aid. We are doing a lot with our troops in the south of Iraq as far as civil military cooperation is concerned, so...do not expect much because there is already much.” (Reuters 131711 GMT Oct 03)
  
  
• The United States has called for a Security Council vote this week on a revised resolution that would set a Dec. 15 deadline for Iraq’s Governing Council to submit a timetable for drafting a constitution and holding elections. But the new U.S. draft doesn’t meet the key demand of France, Germany, Russia and Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a quick handover of power to an Iraqi provisional government within months. The revised resolution would give the United Nations a larger role in Iraq’s political transition to a democracy, but the world body would not be able to act independently of the U.S.-led coalition. (AP 140413 Oct 03)
  
  
• A member of Iraq’s U.S.-appointed Governing Council said Monday that any attack against Syria was considered an attack against Iraq. His three-day visit comes a week after Israeli warplanes attacked a camp near Damascus. Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, who heads the Shiite Muslim group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, also said sending Turkish peacekeepers to Iraq will not solve the country’s security crisis. He is scheduled to meet Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday. (AP 131933 Oct 03)

IRAN

• An Iranian opposition group with a proven track record said on Monday that Iran was hiding another atomic facility, just two weeks before a UN deadline for Tehran to come clean about its nuclear ambitions. “We have information about another secret nuclear facility in Iran,” an official from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an exiled opposition group, said in Vienna. He added that the facility has been hidden from IAEA inspectors. He gave no details about the site, but said the NCRI would provide full details on Tuesday. Separately, Iran said IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei would visit Tehran for talks on Thursday. (Reuters 131725 GMT Oct 03)