Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

06 November 2003

IRAQ

• The United States rejected on Wednesday Russian and UN proposals that international inspectors return to Iraq to look for the missing weapons of mass destruction with which Washington justified its invasion. U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the United States did not think UN inspectors should return at this stage because the invasion made their mission irrelevant. (Reuters 052034 GMT Nov 03)
  
  
• Britain’s special representative in Iraq warns that U.S.-led forces faced rough months ahead due to guerrilla attacks, and U.S. officials said thousands of fresh troops would be ordered to prepare for duty. “I believe we are in for a rough winter,” Sir Jeremy Greenstock said in an interview with the Times newspaper, adding British troops could still be in Iraq in 2005. Sir Greenstock criticised three of Iraq’s neighbours - Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia - for not doing more to stem the flow of guerrillas into Iraq. The three countries were cooperating in “dribs and drabs,” he added. In Washington, defence officials said the Pentagon would issue call-up orders immediately for thousands of additional troops, including reservists, to prepare to serve in Iraq early next year. Marine Corps General Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the troops would be part of a 2004 rotation plan, and that the 132,000 American troops now there could decrease to just over 100,000 in May. (Reuters 060358 GMT Nov 03)

WAR ON TERRORISM

• Germany’s defence minister will be responsible for deciding whether to shoot down hijacked aircraft or potential suicide pilots over Germany under a new law drafted partly in response to the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities. Ministers said that the new air security law was not a “licence to kill,” but created a clear legal framework for how to react. “I’m thankful that the cabinet has created the necessary clarity empowering me if necessary to order an airplane to be shot down,” Defence Minister Peter Struck told a joint news conference with Interior Minister Otto Schily. There would be a “permanent information flow” between NATO partners if a threatening aircraft were about to cross from one country’s airspace into another. (Reuters 051339 GMT Nov 03)
  
  
• Chancellor Schroeder’s Cabinet backed a one-year extension to Germany’s troop commitment to the U.S.-led war on terrorism, centered on forces patrolling the Horn of Africa and the Mediterranean. Germany’s maximum contribution to Operation Enduring Freedom and related operations would shrink from 3,900 troops to 3,100 under the mandate. Only 700 are currently deployed. Parliament is expected to vote on the proposal next week. (AP 051245 Nov 03)
  
  
• Kyrgyz security officials said that they had uncovered a plot by Islamic radicals to attack the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition base in this Central Asian nation. The Kyrgyz National Security Committee said it had detained three Islamic radicals who had been planning a terrorist attack against the Ganci base. The Vecherni Bishkek newspaper said Wednesday that the detainees were militants who had fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and had undergone terrorist training there and in Pakistan. (AP 051208 Nov 03)

RUSSIA

• Russian President Putin accused the West of doing too little to help Moscow combat separatist violence in Chechnya, saying many countries had simply ignored his initiatives to establish peace. At a news conference alongside Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi in Rome, he said the West applied double standards in the mainly Muslim region and used it as a weapon against Moscow. “I believe our (Western) counterparts are not doing enough,” he said on the eve of a Russia-European Union summit. His voice rising, President Putin said Western nations had acted to curb the activities of the al Qaeda organisation in Afghanistan “while no one notices the activities of al Qaeda in the North Caucasus, particularly in Chechnya.” (Reuters 052052 GMT Nov 03)