Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

13 January 2004

NATO

• New NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer held his first talks Monday with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, alliance officials said in Brussels. Officials declined to give details of the telephone conversation beyond saying it was a courtesy call to the Russian minister. (AP 121442 Jan 04)
  
  
• Germany’s Defence Ministry is poised to unveil deep spending cuts as part of plans to shake up the armed forces but critics are already saying the move is driven more by short-term budget considerations than strategic planning. German media reported on Monday that Defence Minister Struck was planning to reduce the defence procurement budget by around 25 billion euros up to 2017, cutting several big-ticket items ordered by previous ministers. The Defence Ministry declined to comment ahead of a scheduled news conference by Minister Struck on Tuesday. (Reuters 121756 GMT Jan 04)

BALKANS

• NATO-led troops ended a three-day search on Monday that failed to net top Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic. NATO insisted the operation in Pale - the first in almost two years after a two-day raid in a remote eastern village at the end of February 2002 - was a success, saying information gathered would help its hunt in the future. A NATO official in Brussels, who asked not to be named, rejected a suggestion that the raid meant a switch in tactics to the more aggressive approach used by U.S. troops in Iraq. “But it does show that the capture of Karadzic is very much on NATO’s agenda and that before we wind down in Bosnia this remains unfinished business,” said the official. (Reuters 121658 GMT Jan 04)

IRAQ

• About 120,000 U.S. troops will pass through a Turkish base during the rotation of troops in Iraq over the next four months, a senior source familiar with the situation said Monday. The use of a Turkish base for massive rotation of troops for Iraq is a sign of improved relations between the United States and Turkey. The rotations were expected to last four month beginning next week, the source said. A U.S. Embassy official in Ankara refused to confirm the number of U.S. troops that will pass through Incirlik, citing “operational security reasons.” (AP 121606 Jan 04)
  
  
• Lakhdar Brahimi, the former Algerian foreign minister and chief UN envoy in Afghanistan, will be serving as Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s adviser on Iraq and other issues in the Arab and Muslim world, diplomats said on Monday. Annan is expected to announce the appointment later in the week when Brahimi gives his last report on Afghanistan. (Reuters 122120 GMT Jan 04)

TERRORISM

• Athens Olympic security chiefs plan meetings in Washington this week with top U.S. officials ahead of police and military exercises involving Americans, Greek authorities said Monday in Athens. Details of the American participation in the March security exercises were not disclosed. The 20-day operation will include simulated threats and actual ground manoeuvres against terrorist situations and other scenarios. Greece also plans another exercise from Feb. 6-8 for potential nuclear, biological or chemical attacks. Also on Monday, Defence Minister Yiannos Papantoniou said all NATO countries are involved in the security planning for the Athens Olympics. “NATO member countries will be on a high state of alert ... and will cooperate with us in terms of being ready to intervene if a crisis erupts,” he said. “But as far as the Greek soil is concerned, there will be only Greek forces.” (AP 122031 Jan 04)
  
  
• The United States is expanding anti-terror efforts to the remote reaches of West Africa’s Sahara borders, dispatching troops and contractors to help seal the predominantly Islamic region to al-Qaida and its allies, U.S. Defence and State Department officials said in Washington. “There is a military principle that a quiet front needs to be watched and dealt with just as seriously as an active front,” a U.S. diplomatic official involved in the program said recently. (AP 130054 Jan 04)
  
  
• Nearly 100 countries have failed to enforce UN sanctions against the al-Qaida terror network and the ousted Taliban and they should be publicly identified, the chairman of the committee overseeing sanctions said. Heraldo Munoz, the Chilean ambassador to the United Nations, briefed the Security Council on Monday on the committee’s uphill struggle to implement the asset freeze, travel ban, and arms embargo. The committee “intends to analyze and address the issue of why some states did not submit reports,” he said. “I also feel that these states should be identified for their non-compliance with the Security Council resolutions.” (AP 130335 Jan 04)
  
  
• French anti-terrorism judges on Monday started legal action against six suspects, including two Islamic clerics, as part of an investigation into allegations that the group provided support to a terror cell planning chemical attacks in France. The six were arrested last week as part of a yearlong probe by French anti-terrorism judges into links between Islamic militants and rebels in Russia’s largely Muslim republic of Chechnya. (AP 122304 Jan 04)