Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

21 June 2004

NATO

• NATO’s international credibility is at stake as its members make grand political declarations but then fail to produce the troops needed to fulfil them, the alliance’s head said on Friday in London. “NATO’s political clout is directly related to its military competence,” Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a conference, lamenting how he continually had to beg countries to honour their pledges. “I don’t mind taking out my begging bowl once in a while. But as a standard operating procedure, this is simply intolerable,” he added. In his most hard-hitting speech to date, he told the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London that NATO’s role was in the throes of revolution. No longer could it simply defend its borders, it had to look far further afield to spot emerging threats to peace and security and nip them in the bud. “The demand for NATO is likely to increase, not diminish, in the future,” Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said. “NATO will be called upon by the international community to be peacemaker, peacekeeper, and the provider of security and stability.” “If we are serious about the need to project stability in today’s volatile security environment, we must continue to make sure that our means match our ambitions,” he added. The former Dutch foreign minister said NATO’s force structure also had to be reformed to meet the challenges of the new era of global insecurity. (Reuters 181412 GMT Jun 04)
  
  
• Thousands of demonstrators gathered in an Istanbul square on Sunday, burning U.S. flags and chanting protest slogans against an upcoming NATO summit and visit by U.S. President Bush. Protesters carried banners and signs that said “Istanbul is closing its doors to NATO,” “No to NATO, No to Bush,” referring to the June 28-29 NATO summit in Istanbul. There have also been daily protests throughout Turkey against next weekend’s summit and President Bush’s visit. On Saturday, some 500 protesters threw stones at club-wielding police, who refused to allow them near an air base used by the U.S. military in Incirlik. (AP 201516 Jun 04)

IRAQ

• U.S. senators strongly criticized France and Germany, saying Iraq needs more international help including the support of NATO to provide security in Iraq after the transfer of political control at month’s end. “If we don’t hand over the capacity for this sovereign government to be secure within its own borders and to be at peace with itself, then we’re going to inherit a circumstance in Iraq that is equally as dangerous to us” as having ousted President Saddam Hussein in power, said Senator Joseph Biden. “It’s time for NATO, and particularly the French and the Germans, to act more responsibly now, notwithstanding their frustration with President Bush,” he said in Washington. “We have made it difficult at times to get international cooperation. But that’s in the past. It is now time for NATO to help where NATO can,” Senator Graham said. Senator Frist, who also visited Iraq recently, told “Fox News Sunday” that it was time for other countries “to step up and to aggressively, I think, come to the table in Iraq. I’d like to see NATO come forward somewhat more aggressively.” As for the U.S. presence, Senator Biden said, “We cannot have additional American troops. But we’re not going to be in a position where we have fewer American troops.” (AP 201914 Jun 04)
  
  
• South Korea will go ahead with its plan to send 3,000 troops to Iraq despite a televised threat from Iraqi militants to behead a South Korean hostage, the foreign ministry said on Monday in Seoul. Vice Foreign Minister Choi Young-jin told reporters after a meeting of President Roh Moo-hyun’s National Security Council the government would do its best to seek the release of Kim Sun-il, who was shown on television pleading for his life. (Reuters 210119 GMT Jun 04)

BALKANS

• U.S. Defence Secretary Rumsfeld on Friday sought to encourage Balkan nations to press on with their efforts to join NATO, saying the alliance’s door “remains open.” In a letter sent to a regional defence ministers’ meeting in Skopje, he told three NATO hopefuls - Albania, Croatia and Macedonia (sic) - that their ties with the alliance would be discussed at an upcoming NATO summit in Istanbul. (AP 181744 Jun 04)
  
  
• Even on his birthday, NATO-led peacekeepers did not want Radovan Karadzic to forget they were still looking for him. So on Saturday they put up posters representing birthday cards for Bosnia’s top fugitive war crimes suspect. But instead of tender greetings and good wishes, the posters bore a more threatening message: “Radovan, we did not forget you.” Saturday’s posters were part of an “ongoing campaign to remind the local population that support to persons indicted for war crimes is illegal,” a peacekeepers’ spokesman said. (AP 191220 Jun 04)

lICC

• Secretary-General Kofi Annan told Security Council ambassadors Friday that granting American peacekeepers immunity from international prosecution for war crimes would undermine international law and send “a very unfortunate signal” to the world. Opposition appeared to be growing in the council to renewing an exemption for U.S. peacekeepers for a third year as Kofi Annan stepped up his own campaign against a U.S.-sponsored resolution that would grant them immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court. His tough stand against the resolution appeared to be having an impact. (AP 182345 Jun 04)