Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

19 July 2004

BALKANS

• Serbia’s prime minister called for the creation of a national strategy on how to cooperate with the UN war crimes tribunal, a step seen as another attempt to stall on Western demands for arrests and handovers of indicted suspects. Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, a moderate nationalist who has been highly critical of the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, said cooperation with the court is a “very tough question,” the Beta news agency reported. Kostunica called for a “responsible national strategy based on a consensus” to determine what Serbia should do to “overcome” problems in cooperation with the tribunal, Beta said. The U.S. has conditioned any further political and financial support for Serbia on Mladic’s arrest, while the European Union and NATO have said establishing closer ties also hinges on cooperation with the tribunal. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is expected to reiterate that message when he meets with Kostunica and other top officials on Monday in Belgrade. (AP 190017 Jul 04)
  
  
• The deputy commander of NATO forces in Europe said Friday the alliance had shelved plans to downsize its peacekeeping force in Kosovo since ethnic tensions flared earlier this year. “We have done the contrary,” Adm. Rainer Feist Feist said after being asked about reductions planned by NATO earlier this year. The alliance “at the moment” has no plans to decrease its 18,000-strong peacekeeping force, he added. “If KFOR had not been here and if UNMIK had not been here ... we would have had from March on civil war in this region,” Feist said. “That has been the alternative.” He said the alliance remained committed to helping development in Kosovo, but urged the province's different communities “to learn that people have to live together and not to shoot at each other.” (AP 161449 Jul 04)

AFGHANISTAN

• A rocket fired into the Afghan capital late Sunday killed a woman living close to the headquarters of international peacekeepers, residents and the international force said. The NATO-led troops were also investigating two other detonations close to Kabul airport. The area is about 300 meters from the command compound of the 6,400-strong ISAF, and slightly further from the U.S. Embassy and the palace of President Hamid Karzai. (AP 181859 Jul 04)

IRAQ

• A group led by suspected al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi offered a reward of $282,000 on Sunday for the killing of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, according to a statement posted on an Islamist Web site. “We in Khalid bin al-Walid Brigade announce to the Iraqi people a reward of 200,000 Jordanian dinars ($282,000) to whoever gets us Allawi's head,” said a group statement posted on the site. The authenticity of the message could not be verified and it was unclear why the offer was made in Jordanian currency. (Reuters 182126 GMT Jul 04)
  
  
• The bitter disagreements over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that split the EU are largely healed, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana said in an interview published on Sunday. “There was a very profound crisis, but it is ending, it is healing,” Solana told El Pais daily when asked if divisions over Iraq were closing. He listed the EU’s failure to react in a united way to the Iraq crisis as one of the major frustrations of his five years in office, however. Seasoned diplomats recently said the rifts had left relations between leaders of the 25-nation bloc at the lowest they could recall for a generation. Solana said another main disappointment of his time in office was the failure to find a solution to the conflict in the Middle East. “There will not be stability in the region if we do not find a solution to the problem between the Arab world and Israel. It is therefore necessary to apply all our energy to solving the problem,” he told El Pais. (Reuters 181139 GMT Jul 04)