Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

17 December 2003

NATO

• Having recovered from a “near death experience” this year caused by Iraq war divisions, NATO faces potentially greater challenges in 2004 as it considers major military commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq. The allies go into the new year without the pugnacious leadership of Secretary-General Lord Robertson, who chairs his last NATO meeting on Wednesday before formally handing over on Dec. 31 to Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, a former Dutch foreign minister. His first task will be persuading allied governments to give him the troops to make good on a pledge to the United Nations to expand NATO’s peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan out of the capital, Kabul, into several provincial cities. (AP 161622 Dec 03)

IRAQ

• Iraq’s foreign minister accused the United Nations on Tuesday of failing his country by leaving Saddam Hussein in power for decades and appealed to the world body to assume a leading role in Baghdad immediately. In an address to the UN Security Council, Hoshyar Zebari, foreign minister of Iraq’s Governing Council, noted that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was opening offices in Nicosia and Amman for its international staff. “Your help and expertise cannot be effectively delivered from Cyprus or Amman,” Zebari said. He added that Iraqis were “ready and willing to help provide whatever security is required” but gave few details. In urging the UN to return to Iraq, he said the world body was “the key forum of collective international action to help us achieve our goals of restructuring and democratizing our country.” And he accused the 15-member Security Council of being divided “between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wanted to hold him accountable” and said they should overcome the deep divisions over the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Appealing for unity, Hoshyar Zebari said, “Settling scores with the U.S. should not be at the cost of helping to bring stability to the Iraqi people.” (Reuters 162319 GMT Dec 03)
  
  
• The White House said on Tuesday that the amount of debt reduction for Iraq that the U.S., France and Germany have agreed will be determined later. The three nations struck an agreement to seek substantial debt reduction in the Paris Club of creditors nations in 2004 and agreed to work closely with each other and other countries to achieve this objective. A U.S. official, meanwhile, said any debt relief pact was separate from the issue of who could be awarded contracts to rebuild Iraq. (Reuters 161933 GMT Dec 03)
  
  
• Japan, committed to sending military personnel to Iraq, but cautious about their safety, is planning to send its first substantial contingent of 135 ground troops there on February 21, 2004. Quoting a Defence Ministry proposal, the Mainichi Shimbun said Japan would first send an advance party of 28 troops on January 14 to begin preparations, followed by a 78-strong logistics team on January 31. The 135 troops will then leave, and a total of around 550 troops will be in place by the end of March, according to a ministry proposal which the paper said had been presented to the ruling coalition. Japan’s ground troops are expected to be based near the town of Samawah. (Reuters 170318 GMT Dec 03)

BALKANS

• Macedonians (sic) have voluntarily handed in about 7,500 firearms and 100,000 rounds of ammunition during a six-week campaign aimed at getting weapons out of the hands of civilians and former fighters in this still tense Balkan country, officials said Tuesday in Skopje. The effort, however, yielded just a fraction of the estimated 170,000 weapons believed to still remain in secret caches since an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001 brought the nation to the verge of civil war. (AP 161809 Dec 03)