Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

21 April 2004

IRAQ

• The U.S. military in Iraq is in the midst of a serious reorganization, shifting and swapping troops to cope with simultaneous crises in the south where some coalition partners have balked at clashing with rebellious Shiites and in the west, where a standoff in Fallujah has drained troops from elsewhere. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Tuesday that his country's 443 troops in Karbala will be withdrawn if the government feels they may be harmed. "We are giving priority to the safety of the soldiers. If we consider that our soldiers are in danger, that they will be harmed, we will take them back," he said. And on Tuesday, the Dominican Republic said it may follow Spain and Honduras in pulling its 302 troops from Iraq, a few months early. (AP 210149 Apr 04)

AFGHANISTAN

• Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, was in Afghanistan on Tuesday to rally his nation's peacekeepers providing security in the northern city of Kunduz and hold talks with the Afghan president in the capital. "It is the duty of the world community to help Afghanistan," Fischer told troops at the German-run base. "Extending reconstruction outside Kabul is an important step." The Kunduz The expansion of NATO peacekeepers outside the capital, Kabul, is seen as crucial to ensuring stability ahead of landmark presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June. unit is the first one to come under the umbrella of the NATO-led peacekeeping force. NATO agreed in principal to expand the 6,500-strong peacekeeping force earlier this year, but member-nations have been slow to pledge troops. The alliance's delays in answering the calls for help stabilizing the unruly provinces has provoked mounting criticism from aid agencies, and the UN, which have warned that the elections will fail unless security improves. While NATO appears ready to expand in relatively peaceful northern Afghanistan, the main security problems are in the south and east, where Taliban attacks have made roads too dangerous for travel and forced several relief agencies to pull out. (AP 201500 Apr 04)

TERRORISM

• A Spanish judge charged four Algerian men with belonging to al Qaeda on Tuesday and said they may have learned to make detonators similar to those used in the Bali nightclub and Madrid train bombing attacks. The four worked in support of a French cell that had received training in Afghanistan from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is suspected of playing a role in the violent campaign against the U.S. occupation in Iraq, the judge wrote. "This new class of criminal should not be underestimated" in light of the Bali and Madrid attacks, Garzon wrote in a 14-page court order that formally charged them with terrorism and belonging to a terrorist organisation. (Reuters 201843 GMT Apr 04)
  
  
• The Islamic extremist group said to mastermind deadly railway bombings in Spain has terrorist cells scattered throughout five other Western countries: Belgium, Britain, Canada, France and Italy, a Moroccan newspaper reported Tuesday. Details on the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group emerged in questioning of Nourredine Nafiaa, a group leader, by authorities in the north African country, daily Aujourd'hui Le Maroc reported. Spanish authorities believe the Moroccan group, known by the French acronym GICM, was behind the March 11 rail attacks in Madrid that killed 190 people. The report provided a diagram of the GICM network in the West, pointing to "dormant sleeper cells" in Belgium, Britain, Canada, France and Italy. (AP 201935 Apr 04)

OTHER NEWS

• The Russian and Ukrainian parliaments on Tuesday ratified two key bilateral agreements to resolve a border dispute that caused tensions to soar last year and approved participation in a free trade zone of four former Soviet republics. The agreements set out terms for Ukraine and Russia to share the Azov Sea and determine the countries' border in the Kerch Strait, which connects the Azov and Black seas. Homeland's Sergei Baburin said that ratifying the border agreement could boost Ukraine's chances of becoming a NATO member, arguing that membership would be impossible in the border was not demarcated. After hours of debate, the Ukrainian parliament also voted 265-60 to ratify an agreement creating a free trade zone of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan; the Russian legislature approved it 408-7. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told lawmakers on Tuesday that it was in Moscow's interest to ratify the border agreement, as well as the treaty on cooperation in the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait. (AP 201449 Apr 04)