Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

01 March 2004

AFGHANISTAN

• NATO military planners have proposed setting up a security zone in northern Afghanistan to make a modest start on expanding the alliance’s peacekeeping mission beyond the capital, sources said on Friday. Under the plan, NATO would take command of a handful of civilian/military teams in the relatively stable north of the country and establish a base with quick reaction forces and helicopters in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif for their protection. A classified operational plan for extending the reach of ISAF, drawn up by NATO Supreme Allied Commander General James Jones, was due to be presented to the alliance’s Military Committee on Friday. The document will be passed early next month to NATO’s 19 Nations. One NATO source who asked not to be named said the plan considers the ultimate objective of taking command of some two dozen Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) across the country. This would require the alliance to roughly double the 5,700-strong force it already has in the country. (Reuters 271904 GMT Feb 04)

WAR ON TERRORISM

• A top U.S. general said al Qaeda cells, feeling the heat from the war on terror, may be seeking new havens in Africa, and Washington is talking to African states to allow its troops fast access to trouble-spots. “Although it is not prevalent, there have been indications that al Qaeda is operating,” General Charles Wald, Deputy Commander of U.S. European Command, told the Reuters news agency in an interview late on Saturday from Ghana’s capital, Accra. “The fact they’ve been there is an indicator that in the future and maybe now they intend to operate in the northern part of Africa -- both the Sahel and the Maghreb -- as well as eastern Africa,” he added. (Reuters 291423 GMT Feb 04)
  
  
• U.S. President Bush has approved a plan to intensify the effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, The New York Times reported on Saturday on it Web site, quoting senior administration and military officials. It said the plan would apply new forces and new tactics to the task of hunting down bin Laden. The main force in the new effort is Task Force 121. (Reuters 282210 GMT Feb 04)

GREATER MIDDLE EAST INITIATIVE

• Egypt and Saudi Arabia are proposing to an Arab summit next month that the region try a unified strategy for political and economic reforms. The three-page proposal, obtained Sunday, is short on specifics, but calls for wider participation by Arab people in running their political, economic, social and cultural affairs. The document, titled “A Pledge and A Declaration to the Arab Nation,” said the unspecified reforms will enable Arabs to “enhance international civilization through positive interaction” with the rest of the world. On Friday, U.S. President Bush pushed his proposal for promoting democracy in the Middle East. He is also sending State Department Undersecretary Marc Grossman to the area to discuss how to promote democratic changes. A State Department spokesman said that Mr. Grossman will be discussing the plan during a weeklong trip that also will take him to Turkey and to NATO headquarters in Brussels. Mr. Grossman’s talks with the allies will involve what NATO might do to help spur democracy and security among Arab nations. Arab newspaper columnists have attacked the plan as a case of U.S. “hegemony.” (AP 292057 Feb 04)

IRAQ

• Turkey’s powerful military General Staff warned the Kurds of neighbouring Iraq on Friday against setting up their own separate military force. The Iraqi Kurds have published a plan for greater autonomy which includes turning their militias into a Kurdistan national guard that would be deployed in their northern region instead of the central government’s army. “In Iraq it is important that the army being formed corresponds to the realities of Iraq and the expectations of the (Iraqi) people,” the secretary-general of Turkey’s General Staff, Major General Sabri Demirezen, told a news briefing. He reaffirmed Turkey’s broader opposition to an ethnic-based federation in Iraq. The General Staff repeated its appeal to U.S. occupying forces in Iraq to crack down swiftly on Turkish Kurdish fighters holed up in the mountains of northern Iraq. (Reuters 271607 GMT Feb 04)