Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

18 June 2004

NATO

• A unit of 10 Czech military specialists will go to Istanbul to help guard the forthcoming NATO summit in the Turkish capital. The Czech government agreed to deploy the anti-chemical warfare unit at the request of NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Andrej Cirtek from the Defence Ministry’s press department in Prague said in a statement. (AP 171508 Jun 04)
  
  
• Defying the Bush administration, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to add 20,000 troops to an Army stretched thin by the war in Iraq and other commitments around the world. Republican Senator John McCain said the lack of troops at the end of major combat in Iraq cost the military an opportunity to stop the violence that continues today. (AP 180221 Jun 04)
  

AFGHANISTAN

• The United States plans a more aggressive effort to curb cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan, the top U.S. commander there said on Thursday, but indicated American troops will not actively destroy the crop. Lt. Gen. David Barno said there is only a “finite force” in Afghanistan of 20,000 U.S. troops, whose “primary focus continues to be counter-terrorist operations.” Briefing Pentagon reporters from Kabul, he said there is “a significant effort underway now to dramatically revisit the strategy and work up a very aggressive plan for the coming year” to combat poppy cultivation. A new counter-narcotics coordinator had joined the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, he added. The drug trade, Lt. Gen. Barno said, is “a huge threat to the overall success of the Afghan effort here.” (Reuters 171859 GMT Jun 04)
  

BALKANS

• Former Yugoslav President Milosevic said Thursday that he wants former U.S. President Clinton, German Chancellor Schroeder and British Prime Minister Blair to be subpoenaed in his war crimes trial. They were among nearly 1,400 witnesses the former Serbian leader sought to call in his defence case, set to start on July 5. UN judges at the Yugoslav tribunal declined to immediately rule on the request. (AP 171806 Jun 04)
  
  
• International prosecutors have charged three Kosovo Albanians and one Serb with serious crimes during a wave of violence in the volatile province in mid-March, a UN police spokesman said on Thursday in Pristina. The charges were the first “of a more serious nature” stemming from 48 hours of rioting in which 19 people died and more than 800 Serb homes were set on fire. Around 270 people have been arrested since the ethnic violence. (Reuters 171519 GMT Jun 04)
  
  
• Kosovo’s newly appointed UN governor warned that major powers must not neglect the province, which was the cause of NATO’s first major military intervention five years ago. “There is a lot of attention these days on other priorities, like Iraq and Afghanistan, but turning our back on Kosovo at this stage would be a serious mistake,” Mr. Soren Jessen-Petersen told a news conference in the Macedonian (sic) capital, Skopje. (Reuters 171321 GMT Jun 04)
  
  
• A senior Bosnian Serb official and former ally of Radovan Karadzic was quoted on Thursday as urging the war crimes fugitive to surrender to help Bosnia’s Serb Republic avoid international sanctions. Asked in an interview with a Sarajevo daily what he would tell Karadzic, parliament speaker Dragan Kalinic said: “That without his voluntary surrender...(the Serb Republic) would be exposed to heaviest sanctions and isolation.” That was exactly what the leaders of the Serb Republic were being told by the U.S. administration and the European Union, Mr. Kalinic told the newspaper Dnevni Avaz. (Reuters 171213 GMT Jun 04)
  

OTHER NEWS

• UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan sharply criticized the United States for seeking another exemption from the International Criminal Court, particularly in light of the Iraqi prisoner scandal. “The blanket exemption is wrong. It is of dubious judicial value and I don’t think it should be encouraged by the council,” Mr. Annan told reporters. (Reuters 171649 GMT Jun 04)
  
  
• The navies of China and Britain are staging joint maritime search and rescue exercises over the weekend in the latest move by Beijing to step up interaction with other nations’ militaries, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday. The British guided missile destroyer HMS Exeter and tanker RFA Grey Rover arrived Thursday in the port of Qingdao, home to China’s North Sea Fleet. The ships will join China’s guided missile cruiser Harbin and support ship Hongze Lake for drills on Saturday that will include search and rescue manoeuvres and joint helicopter operations, the report said. The Xinhua News Agency said China would invite military attaches from 16 nations to observe Saturday’s exercises, showing “the new concept of China’s military diplomacy against the backdrop of military reform with Chinese characteristics.” (AP 180208 Jun 04)
  
  
• The UN nuclear watchdog is investigating satellite photos of a possible undeclared nuclear site in Iran where buildings were razed and the topsoil was removed, diplomats and a nuclear expert said on Thursday in Vienna. “This raises serious concerns and fits a pattern...that we’ve seen from Iran of trying to cover up on its activities, including by trying to sanitise locations which the IAEA should be allowed to visit and inspect,” a U.S. State Department spokesman told reporters in Washington. (Reuters 172019 GMT Jun 04)