Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

16 February 2004

IRAQ

• The U.S. administrator in Iraq said on Sunday the United States was awaiting a U.N. recommendation for the handover of sovereignty, still insisting it take place by June 30 as President George W. Bush has demanded. In a pair of interviews on U.S. Sunday talk shows, Paul Bremer would not say which of "literally dozens" of proposals he thought would be put forward and he would await word from U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. The United States plans to hand over sovereignty to a transitional Iraqi administration by the start of July and helped convince Brahimi to assess calls for an early vote. The call for elections has been spearheaded by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential religious authority for Shi'ites, who has demanded an elected government but signalled he may respect the U.N. opinion. On CNN's "Late Edition," Bremer acknowledged the U.S. proposal for caucuses to make such a selection was not moving forward and said the new plan "may be a modified caucus plan ... a partial election." "We will look at that advice (from Brahimi) with great seriousness," Bremer said. "Let's wait and see what he says." But, he added: "The handover of sovereignty is planned for June 30. The president was very clear about that." (Reuters 151255 GMT Feb 04)
  
  
• A U.S. military official on Sunday discounted reports of foreign fighters leading a daring assault on pro-U.S. Iraqi security forces in Fallujah, saying the guerrillas' shrewd tactics and lockstep execution were hallmarks of crack former members of Saddam Hussein's military. "This was something put together by people with knowledge of small-unit tactics," a U.S. military official in Baghdad said on condition of anonymity. "It was a complex, well coordinated attack. This would not be the same tactics that al-Qaida would employ. These are military tactics. It points to former military members." The Saturday assault was perhaps the most sophisticated guerrilla operation since the end of combat in May. The official said the attackers were probably Sunni Muslim Iraqis, perhaps led by high-ranking military officers from Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad. (AP 151244 Feb 04)

AFGHANISTAN

• Foreign troops must help smash Afghanistan's drug traffickers to halt a vicious circle of violence in the country before landmark elections in June, European Union sources said on Friday. The bloc's External Relations Commissioner, Chris Patten, will press for military reconstruction teams to help break up a booming opium drug trade when he visits Kabul next week and at a March 31-April 1 international conference on Afghanistan. The head of the U.N. drug-fighting body said in the capital, Kabul, this week that hundreds of millions of dollars a year from Afghanistan's illicit drug trade end up in the pockets of Islamic militant groups like the Taliban and al Qaeda. "Fighting drug trafficking equals fighting terrorism," said U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa, calling on U.S.-led forces and troops under NATO command to help cut off trafficking and shipments of opium and heroin. Although there are some 19,000 foreign troops in the country, none are engaged in seizing drug traffickers. Thirteen of these so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) will be operating by next month, the vast majority of them under U.S. command. "We would like to see PRTs gradually given a counter-narcotics agenda as well as a security agenda," said one European Commission source. Germany, which runs the biggest PRT, rejects the notion of using force to stem drug trafficking because it could suck its troops into open conflict with warlords and guerrillas. The issue is being debated at NATO, which has taken the German PRT under its command and plans to set up four or five more reconstruction teams by the middle of this year. (Reuters 131647 GMT Feb 04)
  
  
• France opened a military staff college in Afghanistan on Saturday, the latest step in efforts to get the country's fledgling national army off the ground. The Afghan National Army is considered vital to the long-term security of the war-ravaged country, but building it from scratch since the overthrow of the Taliban in late 2001 has been a slow process. The $750,000 training centre for officers is patterned on the French model and was set up by the French military in a rebuilt building on the edge of Kabul. Courses include logistics, communications and operations. (Reuters 140909 GMT Feb 04)
  
  
• Four Afghan aid workers were killed in an ambush Saturday, the latest victims in a bloody Taliban-led insurgency threatening plans for midyear elections. A U.S. soldier died in a mine blast, but the military said it was unclear if it was an attack. The American soldier was killed and nine others wounded when their Humvee hit an anti-tank mine in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, a military spokesman said. Meanwhile, four Afghans working for a de-mining agency were fatally shot in an ambush in the west of the country, officials said. (AP142013 Feb 04)