Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

09 December 2003

NATO

• The U.S. briefed NATO allies on Monday on plans for an overhaul of American forces in Europe that may see tens of thousands of troops transferred from Cold War-era bases in Germany to new bases closer to potential new trouble spots. The senior State Department and Pentagon officials who met NATO ambassadors declined to give details at a news conference afterward, stressing the planning remains at an early stage and will only be completed after consultations. Germany is particularly concerned about closures. It is home to the U.S. European Command and hosts about 80,000 of its 116,000 troops. Many of those troops live in permanent bases set up after World War II that include housing, schooling and entertainment facilities for soldiers’ families in what the U.S. Commander in Europe, Marine Gen. James Jones calls “small American cities” in Germany. While much speculation of the base realignment has focused on NATO members like Romania and Bulgaria, diplomats at alliance headquarters said the U.S. could be looking to go still further. One option could be making more permanent the U.S. presence at bases in Central Asia set up for the war in Afghanistan. (AP 081502 Dec 03)
  
  
• The Hungarian parliament on Monday overwhelmingly voted in favour of a constitutional change allowing the government to deploy troops participating in NATO operations without having first to secure parliamentary approval. Until now, Hungary was the only member of the alliance that needed to secure parliamentary permission every time its forces were deployed abroad. (AP 082156 Dec 03)

EU

• EU president Italy said on Monday it would rephrase a mutual military assistance pact to meet objections from the bloc’s four neutral states that had blocked a defence package apparently accepted by Washington. Ireland, Finland, Austria and Sweden say a clause binding European Union states to help each other in the event of an attack would undermine their neutrality. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the neutral states did not want an opt-out or opt-in clause on mutual defence because this would explicitly exclude them. (Reuters 081930 GMT Dec 03)
  
  
• Turkey will give up its drive to join the EU if it fails to win a date at the end of 2004 for opening entry negotiations with the bloc, Monday newspapers quoted Foreign Minister Gul as saying. “Everybody knows that not getting a date means the end of the EU road,” the Yeni Safak newspaper quoted Abdullah Gul as saying. But he also said Turkey was doing its best to remedy shortcomings identified in a recent progress report from the European Commission. (Reuters 081735 GMT Dec 03)
  

AFGHANISTAN

• UN Secretary-General Annan called for an expanded international force in Afghanistan to reverse the deteriorating security situation which he said is threatening prospects for peace in the country. “The international community must decide whether to increase its level of involvement in Afghanistan or risk failure,” he said in a report to the General Assembly on key political and humanitarian developments since July 2002. He also urged the Afghan government to overhaul the key ministries responsible for security - defence, interior and intelligence - to end their domination by “factional interests” and help restore the Afghan people’s support for the central government. Annan’s report was issued two days before the start of a loya jirga, or grand council, in Kabul that is designed to debate and ratify a new Afghan constitution. UN Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno, briefing the media on Annan’s report, said “the bad news is that so far we haven’t had yet from NATO any clear indication of a stronger ISAF.” Kofi Annan praised the establishment under ISAF command of a German provincial reconstruction team in Kunduz and urged other countries to follow suit. (AP 090244 Dec 03)

BALKANS

• Serbia’s government on Monday rejected UN-proposed guidelines for the future of Kosovo. The draft document, which the UN administration for Kosovo is to present to European Union foreign ministers in Brussels on Wednesday, outlines standards on democracy, human rights, property and other issues that need to be met in the volatile province before its final status can be decided. After reviewing the proposal, the Serbian government declared it “unacceptable in its current form as a way to solve the Kosovo crisis,” said a statement. It said that “essentially none of the objections and suggestions by the (Serbian) government have been seriously considered.” In a rebuff to the Serbian rejection, the UN mission in Kosovo said that “no community holds a veto over the European principles enshrined in the document.” (AP 081923 Dec 03)

OTHER NEWS

• Officials from six ex-Soviet republics which are part of a security pact pledged on Monday to enhance their foreign policy cooperation and called for closer global attention to Afghanistan. Vladimir Rushailo, the secretary of Russia’s presidential Security Council, said at a news conference in Dushanbe that the pact members stressed the importance of “deepening and perfecting the coordination of the foreign policy actions.” The Collective Security Treaty includes Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Another four ex-Soviet republics attended Monday’s talks as observers. On the sidelines of the talks, Rushailo met Tajik President Rakhmonov to discuss joint action to combat terrorism and drug trafficking, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. The group’s Russian executive secretary, Nikolai Bordyuzha, also stressed that Afghanistan remains a source of instability for the region and called for continued international attention to the situation in that country. (AP 081711 Dec 03)