Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

22 July 2004

OLYMPICS

• According to USA Today, a senior NATO official said NATO is expected to approve a plan to send 400 U.S. Special Forces to Greece to help in the event of a terrorist attack during the Olympics. The expected deployment, notes the daily, comes two weeks after the Greeks asked the Alliance for additional counter terrorism assistance. The daily argues that some member nations of the Alliance object to using NATO as a cover for what should be a deal between the U.S. and Greece. If the U.S. troops are under NATO command, also speculates the paper, the Greeks may be able to avoid any backlash against having foreign soldiers on its soil. George Voulgarakis, the Greek public order minister and therefore Greece’s homeland security chief, reportedly emphasized Wednesday that “Greece is exclusively responsible for the protection and guarding of the athletes.” The FBI and the State Department, continues the article, also are sending 100 to 200 agents and body guards to the Games. A U.S. law enforcement official is reported saying that 100 FBI agents will be embedded with the Greek police and they will be allowed to carry weapons although they act primarily as advisers. In a similar vein, the Daily Telegraph writes that the Greek government yesterday conceded that foreign security services will be allowed to carry weapons during the Olympic Games, but instead that all athletes, including those from British, U.S. and Israeli teams, would remain under its exclusive protection. The Greek public order minister reportedly confirmed that the bodyguards of high-profile dignitaries would be allowed to carry their guns while in Athens: “The leaders of countries have specific protocols,” he said, adding nevertheless that security for the competing sportsmen and women would remain entirely up to Greece. The paper, in conclusion, voices Greek officials’ concern about the presence of numerous highly armed and independent protection squads that could lead to confusion and even shoot-outs between guards from different teams.

BALKANS

• AFP, July 20, reported that U.S. Secretary of State Powell pressed Serbian President Boris Tadic to spare no effort to bring top Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic to book. President Tadic allegedly acknowledged that his discussion with Mr. Powell included Serbia’s “cooperation with The Hague tribunal.” “This is very important for our future, also, and political stability in Serbia,” he was reported saying without elaborating. Belgrade, comments the dispatch, is hoping to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace Program, a key step toward membership, but has been blocked due to its failure to arrest suspects wanted for war crimes committed in the Balkan conflicts. Secretary of State Powell, according to the news agency, said he told President Tadic that the U.S. wanted to work with Serbia as it pursued its goals toward membership in NATO and the EU: “I committed to the president that we would do everything we could to help him as he moved forward.” Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic, said the report, had denied any knowledge of negotiations which are reportedly under way between Belgrade and Mladic and Defense Minister Prvoslav Davinic was equally evasive when asked about a report in this week’s Time magazine that Belgrade had offered Mladic financial aid in exchange for his surrender to the UN war crimes court at The Hague.

ESDP

• Hopes are high in Europe for the newly created European Defense Agency, which aims to consolidate military research and spending across the 25 countries, amid some skepticism from the private sector, wrote the New York Times, July 21. Executives from European military companies, observes the paper, fear the European agency will be hobbled by bureaucracy, stifled by shrinking military budgets and rendered impotent by the inability of its members to agree on anything at all. The agency was formed in November and financed in June with a budget of only 30.6 million dollars in an industry of monumental worldwide spending, notes the daily. Still, it continues, the agency’s mandate is huge: pinpoint Europe’s military shortfalls, then coordinate spending and research among EU countries long accustomed to compete. Tension between the industries in the U.S. and Europe is being fueled by a shrill fight between Airbus and Boeing over research and subsidies, underlines the paper, and officials in the U.S. have been critical of the new agency, in part because it operates outside of NATO. However, European companies argue that the European Defense Agency will ultimately be beneficial to the U.S. and the chief executive of the aerospace giant EADS was quoted stating: “We’re not doing this against the United States, as is often wrongly understood … we’re doing it to be a real partner, not to contradict,” adding that a strong European agency will have a greater ability to contribute to the Western world’s overall military capacity.