Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

06 April 2004

TERRORISM

• With the world facing a more virulent form of terrorism, the time for unified global action is at hand, speakers said Monday in Norfolk, Virginia, at a NATO-Russia Council conference on the military’s role in combating terrorism. “The lethal new breed of terrorism we face today calls for realism, and for concrete action,” NATO Secretary General de Hoop Scheffer said in his keynote address. He stressed that Russia is an important partner of the NATO alliance in the fight against terrorism. “We have developed a real spirit of trust and cooperation, which is reflected in regular and frank political dialogue,” he said. In addition, military-to-military cooperation has expanded, from seven joint exercises and events in 2002 to a planned 57 this year, Mr. de Hoop Scheffer added. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said “a new wave of terror is now in the offing” and requires a new level of coordination in the anti-terrorist fight. There is a need for moving away from theorizing and paperwork threat assessment reviews to joint hands-on counter-terrorist activities, Mr. Ivanov said. (AP 051846 Apr 04)
  
  
• Pakistan must eliminate terrorist sanctuaries or the U.S. will step in and do its part in obliterating them, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan warned. Unless the issue of sanctuaries is solved, it will be difficult to fully abolish security problems in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad said on Monday. “We cannot allow this problem to fester indefinitely,” Mr. Khalilzad told people at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “We have told the Pakistani leadership that either they must solve this problem or we will have to do it for ourselves,” he added. (AP 060308 Apr 04)

AFGHANISTAN

• Afghan officials and U.S. soldiers lit a huge bonfire to burn 5.4 tonnes of hashish and opium in southern Afghanistan near Qalat on Monday, saying it was essential to choke off funds to Taliban militants. The head of the U.S. military’s Provincial Reconstruction team in Zabul, accused the Taliban - who are active in the province -of using the drugs trade to finance their insurgency since being overthrown in late 2001. He told the gathering that cutting off this supply of money to the guerrillas would help achieve Afghanistan’s two main needs of post-war reconstruction and security. (Reuters 051811 GMT Apr 04)

MIDDLE EAST

• Arab states should consider U.S. proposals for democratic reform rather than rejecting them outright, the ruler of Qatar said on Monday in Doha. Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani also said Arabs could no longer use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and security fears to justify delaying much-needed political, social and economic change. Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said reform was needed to ease the frustration of Arab people, which he said was helping fuel extremism in the region. (Reuters 052019 GMT Apr 04)