Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

23 July 2004

AFGHANISTAN

• A powerful Afghan warlord will challenge President Hamid Karzai in the country's historic October elections, his spokesman said Thursday, clouding the U.S.-backed incumbent's chances of a clear victory. Abdul Rashid Dostum decided to run after securing support across the war-riven country's deep ethnic divides, his spokesman Faizullah Zaki said and after thousands of supporters feted him at a rally in a northern city. There was no immediate reaction from Karzai. Dostum, like another half dozen likely challengers, lacks the national appeal to pose a direct threat to Karzai at the ballot box. A former communist and commander of a feared militia during the country's civil wars, he is widely mistrusted, especially in the Pashtun-dominated south. But he could win support among fellow ethnic Uzbeks and other minorities and help force a run-off if Karzai fails to secure more than 50 percent in a first round set for Oct. 9. (AP 221711 Jul 04)

BALKANS

• A UN envoy will this week recommend to Secretary-General Kofi Annan top-to-bottom reforms in the UN administration governing Kosovo following the province's deadly riots in March, UN officials said on Thursday. Annan last month asked Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide to evaluate how well the UN mission in Kosovo was working, and how to improve it, after ethnic Albanian mobs rampaged across Kosovo, torching Serb homes and UN vehicles. Eide, who also serves as Norway's ambassador to NATO, led a team to Kosovo, Belgrade, Vienna and Brussels before coming to UN headquarters in New York on Thursday to present his findings. The European Union, NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe are conducting their own assessments of what went wrong in Kosovo to lead to the March violence. (Reuters 222217 GMT Jul 04)

OLYMPICS

• Hungary's military demonstrated a high-tech mobile laboratory designed to help protect the Athens Olympics against attacks with biological weapons. The army claims the Mobile Biological Laboratory is the most sophisticated lab of its kind that can be moved into action on the back of a truck. The Hungarian lab will be deployed at a base 70 kilometers from Athens as part of the NATO protection force. "Terrorists could poison the drinking water in Athens, or the soil where the athletes will compete, or perhaps infect the air using aerosols," Brig. Gen. Laszlo Tombol, who heads the army's NATO coordination department said. "We can get preliminary results within 30 minutes and confirm the identification of a substance usually within an hour," said Dr. Jozsef Furesz, the head of the Defence Ministry's biological research division. Furesz said the lab also would tell the authorities whether an attack is a hoax aimed at disrupting the Games. It will be positioned outside of Athens both to ensure its operation and to protect the public from possible leaks if attacked while it's operating. The lab cost some -1.6 million (US$2 million) to develop. Hungary will pay 27 million forints (US$135,000, -110,000) to install the lab and operate it during the Olympics. The lab arrives in Athens at the end of the month, in time for tests before the start of the Aug. 13-29 Games. (AP 230017 Jul 04)
  
  
• NATO is expected to approve a last-minute Greek request for extra counter-terrorism help at next month's Olympic Games, alliance officials said. "NATO is responding to a specific request from Greece," said U.S. Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns. "The U.S. fully supports and expects a positive response from NATO to assist our ally Greece." A NATO official said on condition of anonymity that the alliance was expected to agree as early as next Wednesday to support Greece. NATO headquarters refused to elaborate on details of the new request, but officials said issues of basing, command and control and who reports to whom had yet to be worked out. "There will not be any American, Portuguese or French army in the streets, the venues or as snipers on rooftops or in any other Olympic-related facilities," Public Order Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis told a parliamentary committee on the Olympics. (AP 230017 Jul 04)
  

OTHER NEWS

• U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sudan must act quickly to disarm Arab militias in its western Darfur region or face possible UN sanctions, stepping up pressure on Khartoum despite its accusation of U.S. and British meddling in the crisis. Sudan promised in a July 3 agreement with Annan to rein in Janjaweed, improve security for the villagers and provide better access for humanitarian workers and African Union monitors. Powell said access to the region has since improved, but "we are still ... not satisfied with the security situation. It is the responsibility of all nations through our collective voice at the UN as well as individually to speak to the Sudanese government in very direct terms about the fact that tens of thousands of their citizens have been killed and many tens of thousands more will die if we do not act now, right away, to bring a sense of security to Darfur so that the aid can flow," he said. (AP 230216 Jul 04)