Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

11 February 2004

ESDP

• France, Britain and Germany presented joint proposals on Tuesday for the European Union to create military battle groups for short-notice deployments to crisis spots around the world. “The aim is for the European Union to be capable to respond to requests by the United Nations,” a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said. Altogether seven or eight highly trained, rapidly deployable battle groups should be created over the next three years. EU diplomats insisted the proposals did not replace the EU’s headline goal to establish a rapid reaction force of 60,000 soldiers, but were one of the building blocks for that force, which is under construction. (Reuters 101618 GMT Feb 04)

U.S. TROOP BASING

• Plans for shifting U.S. units out of Europe and opening new military facilities in eastern Europe will be “fairly complete” by the end of March, a U.S. military official said Tuesday in the most precise indication of a timeline yet. “By the end of March we will have a fairly complete picture,” the official at the U.S. military’s European headquarters in Stuttgart told reporters on condition of anonymity. (AP 101553 Feb 04)

WAR ON TERRORISM

• Largely seen until recently as a logistical base for Islamic terrorists, Italy has become a departure point for suicide attackers linked to al-Qaida and active against U.S.-led forces in Iraq, according to an Italian intelligence report. The document, released on Tuesday, also warned that forces staging anti-coalition attacks in Iraq might expand their scope and targets. The intelligence report said many of the extremists stationed in Italy have links to North-African terror groups and to al-Qaida’s operatives believed to be active in the autonomous northern Kurdish region in Iraq. In an interview published Tuesday, the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said NATO needs to strengthen ties to southern Mediterranean and Middle East countries to combat terrorism. He did not identify the countries he wanted to be part of increased cooperation, but said the plan might in the future include Iraq. The Corriere della Sera quoted the minister as saying that he would make a proposal to NATO at an Alliance summit next month. (AP 101846 Feb 04)
  
  
• Greece on Tuesday announced a 20-day exercise in March involving U.S. troops and experts from seven nations to test security preparations for the Athens 2004 Olympics. Public Order Minister George Floridis said the exercise, to start in mid-March, would be led by the United States. (Reuters 101725 GMT Feb 04)

RUSSIA

• A massive Russian military exercise that will involve numerous launches of ballistic missiles and flights of strategic bombers isn’t aimed against the United States but reflects Moscow’s concerns about U.S. plans to develop new types of nuclear weapons, Col.-Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the first deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces said Tuesday. He dismissed media reports that the planned exercise would closely resemble Soviet-era simulations of an all-out nuclear war with the U.S. saying that it’s not directed against any specific country. He also said that the exercise was prompted in part by Russia’s concern about the development of low-yield nuclear weapons, which he described as destabilizing. (AP 101422 Feb 04)