Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

03 March 2004

NATO

• NATO is determined to provide the three Baltic states with airspace defence when they become members next month despite the suspicions of Russia, the alliance’s chief was quoted as saying on Tuesday. “NATO must do and will do in the Baltics what it is doing in all its territory,” Secretary-General de Hoop Scheffer said in an interview with the Latvian newspaper Diena. “We are speaking about the protection of NATO airspace rather than Baltic air space, and I can assure you that we have the support of all member states,” added Mr. de Hoop Scheffer, who is due to visit Latvia at the end of this week. (Reuters 021430 GMT Mar 04)
  
  
• Hungary plans to abolish the draft and switch to all-volunteer military forces by the middle of 2005, Defense Ministry officials said Tuesday in Budapest. The plans were announced when the government presented parliament with a draft on armed forces reforms planned by 2013. (AP 021347 Mar 04)

BALKANS

• Serbia’s prime minister-designate Vojislav Kostunica sent an assertive message to the West, saying Serb war crimes suspects should be tried at home and ruling out independence for UN-run Kosovo. He advocated “the division into entities or cantonisation” of Kosovo to protect its beleaguered Serb minority and, in comments likely to anger the province’s independence-seeking Albanian majority, he added: “For Serbia, the word status in relation to Kosovo can have many meanings but not independence.” Kosovo’s Albanian prime minister Rexhepi rejected Kostunica’s proposal on its future. “Kostunica has to be aware that the time of divisions, cantonisation and segregation along ethnic lines is long gone,” his spokeswoman said. A spokesman for the UN mission in Kosovo said: “We don’t support any cantonisation of Kosovo, we consider Kosovo as one entity and the final status of Kosovo will be decided only by the UN Security Council.” (Reuters 021649 GMT Mar 04)

AFGHANISTAN

• Afghanistan’s elections, scheduled for June, may need to be delayed, the European Commission said on Tuesday, as only a tenth of voters have been registered and the job was not likely to be completed on time. “We think it’s more important for Afghanistan to have credible elections later than elections early that will not be trusted by the population,” Commission External Relations spokeswoman Emma Udwin told a briefing. (Reuters 021342 GMT Mar 04)

OTHER NEWS

• Arab foreign ministers have made some progress on plans to reform the Arab League, the group’s chief said on Tuesday, after they discussed proposals to give the body a more united and effective international voice. But Secretary-General Amr Moussa did not say if ministers backed specific proposals on the agenda during two days of talks in Cairo, such as creating an Arab security council, a regional parliament and a court of justice. Moussa’s reform suggestions included setting up a security council with seven elected members and whose role would cover proposing collective measures to deal with threats to Arab states from other Arabs or from outside the region. (Reuters 022225 GMT Mar 04)
  
  
• Israel is close to agreement on participating in the EU’s Galileo navigation satellite project, its envoy to the EU said on Tuesday. Ambassador Oded Eran told a seminar at the European Parliament the accord would be another step towards his country’s goal of reaching as close an association as possible with the EU without actually seeking membership. Israel, which has both a civilian and a military space programme, would be the second outside partner to join Galileo, after China signed up last year. (Reuters 021819 GMT Mar 04)