Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

8 June 2004

NATO

• NATO boosted ties with Ukraine on Monday by signing an agreement to use its eastern neighbour's transport planes but said the country must build a functioning democracy before it is ready for membership. NATO and Ukraine signed a "memorandum of understanding on strategic airlift", which one NATO official described as setting out a framework for future cooperation. "It gives Ukraine an idea of how much NATO could request and gives NATO an idea of what Ukraine has to offer, though nothing's set in stone and no money's changing hands," the official said. "Strengthening of democratic institutions, development of civil society and guarantee of rule of law are all crucial preconditions for bringing Ukraine closer to the fulfilment of its legitimate Euro-Atlantic integration inspiration," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told delegates at a NATO-Ukraine meeting in Warsaw. He later told a news conference the alliance was grateful for Ukraine's participation in peacekeeping operations. "We could not do without Ukraine," he said. (Reuters 071754 GMT Jun 04)

IRAQ

• U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said he expects the Security Council to approve the U.S.-British resolution on Tuesday afternoon, and council diplomats said the vote could be unanimous. "We think this is an excellent resolution," Negroponte said. It marks "the fact that Iraq is entering into a new political phase, one where it is reasserting its full sovereignty." The draft resolution revised four times over the past two weeks also marks an end to the occupation and defines the relationship between the new government and the U.S.-led multinational force. Key elements are how much authority the Iraqi leadership will have over its own armed forces and whether it will have a say in U.S.-led military operations. It also notes "that Iraqi security forces are responsible to appropriate Iraqi ministers, that the government of Iraq has authority to commit Iraqi security forces to the multinational force to engage in operations with it" and that the new security bodies outlined in the letters will be used to reach agreement on military and security issues. The resolution says the interim government will have authority to ask the force to leave, but Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi indicated in a letter to Powell that the force will remain at least until an elected government takes power early next year. The new resolution asks UN member states and regional and international organizations "to contribute assistance to the multinational force, including military forces, as agreed with the government of Iraq." (AP 080319 Jun 04)

BALKANS

• The top European Union official on foreign policy and security urged those in Kosovo to reject violence Monday as he visited the ethnically tense province following the recent slaying of a Serb teen. "This ... will not be a healthy society until events of this nature ... disappear from the soil of Kosovo," said Javier Solana. "The society where 16-year-old kids are killed is not a healthy society," he said. "That society does not belong to Europe." The murder angered the Serb minority, which accused the United Nations and NATO-led peacekeepers of failing to protect them. Earlier, Solana inspected a Serb house that has been rebuilt after being destroyed during mid-March ethnic riots in the ethnically mixed town of Kosovo Polje. Standing next to a burned-out school, Solana said the government-led efforts for reconstruction in the Serb-populated areas were too slow. "The speed at which the process of reconstruction is going is too slow," he said. "If they maintain this rhythm, it will never be finished and this has to be finished." (AP 071330 Jun 04)
  
  
• Bosnia's administrator said Monday that Bosnian Serbs have two weeks to show cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal, or the whole state faces further international isolation. The Bosnian Serb authorities, who share about a half of war-torn Bosnia together with the Muslim-Croat federation, have two weeks to offer "clear and concrete proof" that they are "ready to accept their international obligations," said Paddy Ashdown, Bosnia's international administrator. Ashdown did not specify what will happen if the Bosnian Serb authorities did not comply, but he indicated that the whole of the Bosnian state would continue to face international isolation, including steps to get closer to the European Union. The United States and the European Union have demanded that Serbia-Montenegro arrest and extradite the former Bosnian Serb military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, to The Hague before it begins approaching membership in NATO and the EU. (AP 071523 Jun 04)