Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

27 January 2004

NATO

• Sofia’s BTA reports a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Sofia Tuesday that Bulgaria’s accession to NATO can be expected to take place in April. According to the dispatch, the spokesman recalled that a NAC meeting at foreign ministers level in December 2003 reached an agreement in principle that the new members may formally accede to NATO immediately after completion of the accession protocol ratification process. He reportedly noted that France is the only member state which has not yet ratified the accession protocols for Bulgaria and the other six invitees, adding, however: “Paris has given assurances that the ratification will be completed in February.” The spokesman is further quoted saying “the decision makes it possible that full membership will become a fact (before) the Istanbul summit, much earlier than the original target date,” and adding: “Early accession will allow Bulgaria to stand on an equal footing with the other member states when considering and adopting important documents during the Istanbul meeting.”

ISAF

• According to Defense Minister Struck, writes Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the Strasbourg-based Eurocorps should take over command of ISAF in Afghanistan. The newspaper quotes Struck saying, at a news conference in Berlin, that the Eurocorps has the military ability to command the force headquarters in Kabul from midyear on. The article adds: “A command handover in August is apparently under discussion. The ISAF headquarters is 460-strong. ISAF is currently commanded by a German-U.S. headquarters in Heidelberg. Canada is to take over command of the force in the near future. Struck announced that the five countries that provide troops for the Eurocorps would discuss such an offer to NATO on the sidelines of the Security Conference in Munich in early February…. He said he had already talked to his French counterpart Alliot-Marie. He stressed that a command handover would not lead to an augmentation of German forces in Afghanistan beyond the numbers approved by the Bundestag.”

Media focus on Tuesday’s suicide attack on an ISAF convoy in Kabul, which killed a Canadian soldier and wounded three.
AP reports Afghan President Karzai condemned the attack in a statement, blaming it on “terrorist elements intent on disrupting the peace and security of our people.”

UNITED STATES-TROOP BASING

• According to AP, Secretary of State Powell said in Moscow Tuesday U.S. plans to station military facilities in Eastern Europe are not part of an anti-Russia strategy, but rather an effort to obtain easier access to potential crises in Central Asia. Powell, winding up a three-day visit to Georgia and Russia, reportedly told Moscow radio the “temporary facilities” the United States has in mind “would not be big bases of the kind we had during the Cold War. They might be small places where we could go and train for a brief period of time or use air bases as access to dangerous places, crisis places” to the east and south of Russia. He reportedly stressed that it would be a mistake for Russians to see the planned deployments as directed against Russian interests. According to the dispatch, Powell acknowledged Russian concern about the eastward movement of U.S. forces, but he said: U.S. forces on the European continent are “going to well below 100,000. Nobody should be concerned that somehow the United States is building up its forces to be a threat to anyone or to surround anyone.”

IRAQ

• According to CNN, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in Paris Tuesday that if security allows, he will send a team to Iraq to see if early elections can be held. The broadcast quoted Annan saying in a statement: “The mission will ascertain the views of a broad spectrum of Iraqi society in the search for alternatives that might be developed to move forward to the formation of a provisional government. The mission will report to me on its return to New York.” Annan was further quoted saying he would send the mission “once I'm satisfied that the (U.S.-led authority) in Iraq will provide adequate security arrangements.”

BALKANS

• AFP reports UN war crimes court prosecutor Graham Blewitt, a deputy to ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, asserted in an interview with a Sarajevo daily that Radovan Karadzic remained at large due to a lack of international political will and may never be arrested. Blewitt is quoted saying: “The (ICTY) has constantly been told that there is a political will in the West to arrest Karadzic, but I must say that I do not believe it. Look what happened with Saddam Hussein. There was a political will for his capture and he was captured. If the same determination existed in Karadzic’s case, he would have been in The Hague already.” In the International Herald Tribune, David Harland, who served as head of UN civil affairs in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the signing of the Dayton accords, stresses reconstruction there is “a remarkable success story.” He charges, however, that “something has gone wrong.” Under the title, “Lesson for peacemakers,” Harland writes: “The international community has spent upwards of $10 billion in Bosnia, and many thousands of foreigners, military and civilian, have worked on the implementation of various parts of the Dayton agreement. Bosnia, however, is still far from being a self-sustaining state…. We were (also) slow to address the question of law and order, especially the criminal justice system. While we dithered, organized crime sank deep roots…. Worst of all, we allowed a culture of impunity to develop. To this day, the most wanted men in the country, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, remain at large.”
  
  
• International media report former Dutch Prime Minister Kok and former Foreign Minister Van Aartsen were questioned in court in The Hague Monday on NATO’s 1999 bombing of Serbia as part of a hearing by victims and relatives. AFP writes that over a dozen Serbian bombing victims wanted to question Kok about human rights violations in the bombing of Serbia’s radio-television tower on April 23 and the May 7 bombing of the southern city of Nis as part of NATO’s campaign to force Belgrade to end its anti-Albanian crackdown in Kosovo. The dispatch recalls that in Nis, NATO cluster bombs landed near a marketplace and hospital, killing 15 people, according to Human Rights Watch, with NATO saying the bombs had been targeted to hit an airfield a mile away. It quotes Kok saying the deaths and injuries from the Nis bombing, due to a technical problem, were regrettable, but that the use of the bombs which spread small explosives over a wide area, was not banned. Kok reportedly also said that the Dutch government was not informed in advance of the attack on the radio-television tower, but had given NATO its agreement on attacks on Serbian communications facilities. The dispatch adds that Kok and former Foreign Minister Van Aartsen said the tower was also part of the military communications network under the Milosevic regime. Noting that Dutch law allows a preliminary hearing of a certain number of witnesses before a case has to be filed, the dispatch adds that the bombing victims and their lawyers were to decide later whether to file a case. Rotterdam’s NRC Handelsblad, Jan. 26, reported that the investigating magistrate and the lawyer representing the relatives asked Van Aartsen how NATO had compiled the list of targets. It added that Van Aartsen said that within the NATO framework, member states agreed upon a phased approach. At a meeting in Brussels on March 30, 1999, member states agreed to attack power plants, oil storage tanks, and communications centers if warranted. The RTS studio belonged to this third category of possible targets, he reportedly stressed. According to the newspaper, he also recalled that the NATO spokesman announced this in public on several occasions and added that Amnesty international had been informed prior to the raid.