Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

16 December 2003

ESDP

• British Prime Minister Blair said on Monday that London looked set to retain its national veto over taxation and defence in an EU constitution but Brussels argued that nothing could be banked on. Tony Blair told parliament he believed the EU had reached a consensus at a failed weekend summit that would ensure Britain’s “red lines” of keeping a veto on tax, social security, foreign policy and defence were not crossed in a new constitution. European Commission spokesman Stefaan de Rynck said a deal, negotiated by the EU’s three big powers - Britain, France and Germany - on arrangements for collective defence, with a vanguard of countries pushing ahead with closer defence cooperation, was on ice. An agreement to set up a planning cell for EU military operations would not move forward unless member states pressed ahead with it outside a constitutional framework, he said. (Reuters 151820 GMT Dec 03)

BALKANS

• The European Union’s foreign policy chief on Monday warned Serbians of possible renewed isolation of their republic if hardline nationalists win in upcoming general elections. Javier Solana spoke in Belgrade after meeting top officials of the current, pro-Western government, who face the risk of losing power in the Dec. 28 vote for the Serbian parliament. “We will like to see very much that people of Serbia make the choice between the future and the past,” Solana said, expressing support for the ruling reformist and pro-democracy political parties that can “take Serbia in the right direction, the direction of Europe.” (AP 151702 Dec 03)
  
  
• Bosnian Muslims welcomed the arrest of Saddam Hussein but voiced frustration at the West’s failure to capture Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic. “The Saddam arrest shows that if there was true will to arrest Karadzic it could have already been done and could still be done,” said political commentator Senad Pecanin of the independent weekly magazine Dani. Columnist Edin Krehic wrote in the Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje Hussein was caught asleep but “Radovan Karadzic still sleeps peacefully.” He said NATO peacekeepers are pinning their hopes on stumbling across him and alleged that authorities in the Serb Republic were only paying lip service to Western demands to go after Karadzic and other fugitive war crimes suspects. (Reuters 151823 GMT Dec 03)
  
  
• The EU launched a new police mission to replace its military presence in Macedonia (sic) on Monday, a sign that security in the Balkan country had improved considerably since an ethnic conflict in 2001. “This is a day that signifies that the process towards stabilisation and normalisation has reached a point where the country is in a position to wish good-bye to foreign troops,” said Javier Solana, the EU foreign and security policy chief. The launching of the 200-strong Proxima mission, the bloc’s second police mission in the Balkans after Bosnia, also marked the end of the EU’s first peacekeeping operation. The main task of the unarmed EU policemen would be to advise and help local authorities fight crime and manage borders. (Reuters 151640 GMT Dec 03)

TERRORISM

• A Turkish man accused of making four car bombs that killed more than 60 people last month in Turkey has said he was trained by al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Turkish newspapers said on Monday. The man was arrested last week near the Iranian border. “When I went to Afghanistan in 1994, I was trained in combat techniques and bomb-making at a camp under the control of al Qaeda,” the Milliyet newspaper quoted the man as telling Turkish investigators. “The order for the attack came personally from Osama bin Laden through two men who went to Afghanistan,” the Hurriyet newspaper quoted the suspect as saying. (Reuters 151222 GMT Dec 03)