Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

12 November 2003

NATO

• NATO and the European Union are to hold their first joint exercise, testing military and political cooperation with a fictitious crisis management scenario, the organizations announced Tuesday in Brussels. The six-day exercise, starting Nov. 19, will involve high-level officials at the NATO and EU headquarters in Brussels, NATO’s military headquarters in southern Belgium and national capitals, but will stop short of deploying troops. The exercise aims to build on lessons learned from the EU’s ongoing peacekeeping mission in Macedonia (sic). (AP 111611 Nov 03)

EU

• Sweden and Finland joined Britain on Tuesday in condemning a plan under which a group of willing European Union member states could cooperate more closely on defence. Such a move would create tensions within the EU and across the Atlantic, Finnish Foreign Minister Tuomioja and Swedish colleague Freivalds said in a joint article published in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter. They both said that crisis handling under the EU name should only take place with the consent of all members. They said they wanted the EU to develop as a political alliance based on solidarity rather than as a military alliance with binding defence guarantees. (Reuters 111036 GMT Nov 03)

AFGHANISTAN

• NATO must succeed in Afghanistan or a flood of ills from heroin to refugees will descend upon Europe, Secretary-General Robertson told a parliamentary session of the treaty organization on Tuesday. “Be assured that if normalization doesn’t come to Afghanistan, then the Taliban will be back, and so will al Qaeda,” he told the Reuters news agency after his speech. Lord Robertson urged European members to make more troops available for deployment. He also said that Europe should not look to the U.S. for more troop support in Afghanistan. (Reuters 112147 GMT Nov 03)
  
  
• Afghanistan has entered “the most critical phase in the peace process” as it heads toward elections, beset by warlords, terrorism and massive drug trafficking that could turn the country into a “narco-state,” a UN Security Council mission reported after a week-long visit to the country. “The mission clearly saw how the lack of security – ‘the rule of the gun’ - affected the entire Afghan peace process,” Germany’s UN Ambassador Gunter Pleuger said. (AP 120012 Nov 03)

IRAQ

• Iraq’s interim foreign minister called on Tuesday for a tough new security force composed of fighters from political groups opposed to Saddam Hussein – an idea Washington once resisted, but may now be edging towards. “Security responsibilities need to be handed over to dedicated, politicised Iraqis who are committed to the new Iraq,” Hoshiyar Zebari told the Reuters news agency in an interview. “They would hunt down Baathist loyalists, within the law, but with a tougher approach,” he said. “We need to show people that there is a visible Iraqi authority in the street.” Zebari, a Kurd, said Kurdish fighters could join, along with those of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and others contributed by Shi’ite and Sunni parties. “There are other groups, inside and outside the Governing Council, that have potential resources,” he added. (Reuters 111424 GMT Nov 03)

BALKANS

• The NATO-led peacekeepers launched on Tuesday an operation to destroy large quantities of weapons and ammunition belonging to the Bosnian Serb Republic’s army, a spokesman for the force said. “Something in order of 1,000 metric tonnes needs to be destroyed as soon as possible,” the spokesman told a news conference, adding that about 5,000 surface to air missiles would be destroyed in total. “This is a key piece of the defence restructuring package,” he added. (Reuters 111318 GMT Nov 03)