Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

12 January 2004

BALKANS

• NATO troops on Sunday scaled down a major weekend hunt for top Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, triggered by a tip that injury may have forced him to seek help in his old headquarters town. By nightfall, only an ex-paramilitary policeman said to be "a supporter" had been detained, outside a nearby ski-resort hotel. The "short-notice" manhunt began in a snowstorm on Saturday, as 200 troops and police fanned out in the town of Pale to search hospital and church buildings from top to bottom, looking under beds, in cupboards and even the church bell-tower. The NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) said it was acting on reliable information that Karadzic had contacted his family and supporters, and might be injured. The search, which included local Bosnian Serb police, was the "single biggest joint operation we have conducted in 18 months" SFOR Captain Mathew Brock told reporters. "Mr Karadzic has not been located," he said. But ammunition and documents found in his wife's house could be "very useful in determining his whereabouts," Brock told Reuters. Karadzic's daughter, Sonja, protested that she and her family had been kept as "hostages" by SFOR. "We are embittered by the behaviour of the soldiers. We feel like hostages... This is a violation of human rights," she told Reuters by telephone from the house, after British and U.S. soldiers entered and Slovenian troops and Italian Carabinieri were deployed around it. (Reuters 111719 GMT Jan 04)

IRAQ

• The U.S. military has begun using a sprawling air base in southern Turkey for a massive rotation of troops for Iraq, a U.S. official said Sunday, a sign of improved relations between United States and NATO-ally Turkey strained over the war. The use of Incirlik comes as a relief to the U.S. military as it deals with the largest movement of troops in decades. The U.S. military is preparing to send some 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq home over the coming months. The troops are to be replaced by a more mobile, less heavily armed force of about 110,000. Camps in Kuwait and air bases in Germany are also expected to be used in the rotation. Points in Bahrain, Qatar, and Spain could also be used. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Friday there was "nothing new" at the base, but said Incirlik "has been used and will be used because the transportation of certain soldiers is more secure through Incirlik." (AP 111929 Jan 04)
  
  
• Polish Gen. Mieczyslaw Bieniek took command Sunday of the 9,500-strong multinational force in Iraq, saying he would pick up where his predecessor left off with the stabilization of the south-central security sector. "The situation is not as stable as we would like and we are prepared for different threats," said Bieniek during the ceremony in the Camp Babylon, the headquarters of the force made up of troops from 21 nations. "Our attention will concentrate on the stabilization, strengthening of the administration and training of local troops and police." Bieniek, 52, replaced Polish Gen. Andrzej Tyszkiewicz as Poland rotates in replacement troops for the 2,400 soldiers it deployed last summer. (AP 111228 Jan 04)
  
  
• Italy's cabinet on Friday approved keeping troops in Iraq for another six months, reflecting Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's support for the U.S.-led post-war efforts. A cabinet meeting statement said Italian forces would stay until June 30. The mission could be extended again after that. Italy, a staunch U.S. ally, has more than 2,000 non-combat troops in Iraq, helping with policing and reconstruction. Berlusconi has pledged support for the Iraq mission despite opposition demands that he withdraw after a devastating suicide attack on an Italian base killed 19 Italians in November. (Reuters 091327 GMT Jan 04)

AFGHANISTAN

• A rocket was fired toward an airport used by American troops in eastern Afghanistan Sunday, but failed to explode, the Afghan military reported. The rocket screeched over a village near Khost city airport at about 2 a.m., said Niishauddin, a spokesman for the military commander of Khost province. It failed to detonate, and investigators were not immediately able to find the impact site, he said by satellite telephone from Khost city, 150 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of the capital, Kabul. Rockets are fired regularly at U.S. military bases across the south and east of the country, where anti-government insurgents have mounted a series of attacks on troops, government officials and aid workers. (AP 111133 Jan 04)

OTHER NEWS

• A leaked British Army medical report has provided the first official backing that vaccines given to British soldiers before the 1991 Gulf War caused illnesses associated with Gulf War Syndrome, the Times reported on Monday. It said Lieutenant-Colonel Graham Howe, clinical director of psychiatry with the British Forces Health Service in Germany, made the link after the War Pensions Agency asked him to look at the case of former Lance-Corporal Alex Izett, who now suffers from osteoporosis and acute depression, the paper said. The Times quoted Howe as saying in his unpublished report, dated September 2001 and handed to the paper by Izett, that "secret" injections given to the soldier "most probably led to the development of autoimmune-induced osteoporosis". The existence of Gulf War Syndrome and its possible causes have been hotly debated. It has been linked variously to the inoculations the veterans received, pesticides they handled, smoke from oil-burning fires, stress and organophosphates -- chemicals that have been shown to affect the human nervous system. U.S. and British veterans of the conflict have complained of symptoms such as respiratory and digestive problems, nerve damage, fatigue, pain, numbness and memory and psychological problems. (Reuters 120301 GMT Jan 04)