Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

6 February 2004

NRF

• According to AFP, Feb. 4, the French presidency announced Wednesday that an agreement had been reached with NATO on the participation of French generals to key positions linked to the establishment of the NRF. “We are satisfied with the agreement. It is the consequence of a decision made (at the Prague summit) regarding the NRF,” a spokesman for the French presidency reportedly said after talks between President Chirac and NATO Secretary General de Hoop Scheffer. According to the dispatch, it is envisioned that a French admiral will be assigned to ACT in Norfolk and one general to the NRF.

NATO

• NATO defense ministers were to meet in Germany Friday to discuss the future of the transatlantic military Alliance, boosting its presence in Afghanistan and defining the role it could play in Iraq, reports an AFP dispatch. Focus of the informal meeting, adds the agency, will be in fact to ensure a successful mission in Afghanistan, probably by deploying more troops outside the capital, recalling the NATO Secretary General’s recent statement: “We cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan.” Iraq’s security, and NATO’s part in it, continues the dispatch, will also be discussed at the meeting - which comes ahead of a weekend security conference in Munich - as well as the damage caused to transatlantic ties by the war in Iraq. U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is quoted as saying to reporters on his flight from Washington: “I think NATO’s… first task is to do well the Afghan task …. The next step might be for them to take on a somewhat larger role in Afghanistan,” adding: “With respect to Iraq, they have stepped forward and have been working with the Polish and Spanish multinational division, and we would hope they would continue to take a larger role.” In a related article, the New York Times cites Defense Secretary Rumsfeld stating, prior to informally meeting on Friday with fellow NATO defense ministers, that stabilizing Iraq may be a long-term issue for the Alliance, but NATO must first address more immediate problems in Afghanistan. The daily also reminds NATO’s top military commander Gen. James Jones’ complaints, last month, about the fact that Alliance members were not providing enough troops to fulfill NATO’s plan to expand its reconstruction efforts beyond Kabul. Moreover, in a speech to an annual international security conference on Saturday, Mr. Rumsfeld is purportedly expected to build on U.S. Vice President Cheney’s call to allies last month in Switzerland to move beyond differences over the Iraq war and redouble common efforts to combat terrorism and the spread of illicit weapons. On the NATO defense ministers meeting, Reuters reports: “NATO’s top soldier was set to deliver a blunt message to allied defense ministers on Friday: start offering troops and helicopters or forget about expanding peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan… NATO Secretary General de Hoop Scheffer and the Alliance’s Supreme Commander, Gen. James Jones, are expected to take a tough line when they address NATO defense ministers in Munich.”

IRAQ

• The Washington Post writes that according to senior U.S. and UN officials, “The U.S. plan to hand over power in Iraq is increasingly likely to undergo major changes rather than merely ‘refinements,’ because of increasing skepticism about the June 30 deadline for creating a provisional government and erosion of support for the proposal to use caucuses to select it.” One option, says the paper, is extending the June 30 deadline to allow enough time for the direct elections demanded by Grand Ayatollah Sistani and there is already talk about a hypothetical extension to January 1, 2005. But this, observes the daily, could imply that the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority would stay longer, which could carry problems for President Bush in an election year and anger Iraqis who want the foreign occupation to end as soon as possible. The U.S., comments the article, is “open” to almost any option leading to a political transition that has broad Iraqi support, and the Bush administration’s decision to grant the UN the authority to negotiate the terms of Iraq’s political transition marks the third time in a year that it has been forced to redraw the map for Iraq’s political future.
  
  
• Dispatches from AP, AFP and Reuters, combined by the International Herald Tribune, quote French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie as saying, in an interview with Le Monde published Thursday, that France wants to help Iraq train a new army and police forces. When asked whether France might offer military cooperation to the planned provisional Iraqi government expected to assume power by July 1, she reportedly answered: “We could only envisage intervening at the request of such a government and in a framework of the United Nations.” Meanwhile, note the reports, German Foreign Minister Fischer said Thursday he was skeptical of suggestions that the Alliance should play a greater role in Iraq and he allegedly remarked that Chancellor Schroeder said last month that Germany remained opposed to sending troops to Iraq but was nevertheless willing to supply humanitarian aid.

BALKANS

• The U.S. said it opposed immediate consideration of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia-Montenegro and urged leaders in the province to concentrate on democratic reform, according to AFP, Feb. 5. “At this time, we believe the focus needs to be on making progress on those standards, particularly those involving multi-ethnicity, and not a discussion of final status,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher reportedly said. Furthermore, he was also reported saying the U.S. had not yet taken a position on whether to support or oppose a bid for Kosovo’s independence but would “continue to work with its allies to create a stable and democratic Kosovo.”