Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

13 November 2003

NATO

• NATO should learn from the U.S. experience in the Iraq war to make sure its air, land and maritime services act together as a coherent combat force, the U.S. admiral in charge of modernizing the alliance’s military said Wednesday. “Integrate the forces in both the planning and the operations – that’s probably one of the main lessons learnt,” said Adm. Giambastiani. Visiting NATO headquarters from his base in Norfolk, Virginia, Adm. Giambastiani told reporters other main lessons from Iraq would include integrating elite special forces into conventional troop operations. He said the Iraq war also showed the need to improve assessment of battlefield damage. “Our ability to do this rapidly for very fast-paced operations is not good enough,” he added. (AP 121542 Nov 03)
  
  
• The Czech government on Wednesday approved military reform that will abolish the draft and create an all-professional force. The news agency CTK quoted Defense Minister Kostelka as saying that by 2008, the armed forces would have some 26,200 professional soldiers and 8,800 civilian employees. The last draftees will leave the service by the end of next year. (AP 121731 Nov 03)

WAR ON TERRORISM

• UN sanctions against the al-Qaida terror network and Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban regime need “more teeth,” the chairman of the UN committee overseeing sanctions said. Heraldo Munoz said that many countries are not freezing all assets and enforcing an arms embargo and travel ban on the 272 individuals and entities linked to the two groups that are on the UN sanctions list. And he said the list itself is woefully incomplete. While 4,000 individuals linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban have been detained in over 102 countries, Munoz said, the UN list has just 272 names culled from reports by only 84 countries. (AP 130204 Nov 03)

IRAQ

• Citing the earmarks of methodical planning, some top U.S. commanders in Iraq fear the insurgency could be the counterattack ousted Iraqi leader Saddam planned all along, according to a published report. The officers theorize that the Iraqi government cached weapons before the U.S.-led invasion and planned to employ guerrilla tactics, The Washington Post reported in its Thursday editions. “I believe Saddam Hussein always intended to fight an insurgency should Iraq fall,” Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack said. He told the newspaper that there was no evidence that Saddam was orchestrating the attacks. (Reuters 130523 GMT Nov 03)

BALKANS

• Serbia and Montenegro on Wednesday accused the United Nations war crimes court of showing it disrespect by refusing to release, pending trial, suspects who have surrendered voluntarily. Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic said The Hague tribunal had rejected most of Belgrade’s requests to release suspects pending trial even though the ruling reformers had guaranteed they would not go into hiding. “This has contributed to considerable mistrust,” he added. (Reuters 121833 GMT Nov 03)

OTHER NEWS

• EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said that the experience of Iraq may make the United States less inclined in future to go it alone and resort to military force to remove its enemies. Solana said the idea that the U.S. should be a “revolutionary actor,” using force to oust governments around the world that it did not like, was not the dominant view in the Bush administration. He said he expected the message from the talks in Washington between President Bush and Paul Bremer to be “Let’s do it more rapidly, let’s do it more a la Bosnia or a la Afghanistan” - a reference to the importance of multinational cooperation in rebuilding states. “Even the United States has realised the problems of today are too difficult, too complicated, and they cannot be solved by a country alone,” the former NATO chief told a foreign policy seminar in Berlin. (Reuters 121716 GMT Nov 03)