Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

02 August 2004

AFGHANISTAN

• Nine out of 10 eligible Afghans have signed up for landmark October elections, the UN said on Sunday. “The participation is amazing,” UN spokesman David Singh said. “There was a lot of scepticism about this process at the beginning, but the targets have been fulfilled.” The UN said that security, which is to be bolstered by thousands of newly trained Afghan police and soldiers by polling day, was still insufficient. Security “has to be addressed and improved,” Mr. Singh added. (AP 011443 Aug 04)

IRAQ

• NATO countries agreed Friday to begin training Iraqi security forces after sidestepping a dispute between the United States and France over command of the alliance operation. Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said a 40-member advance team would leave for Iraq “as soon as possible” to begin the training and would report back in September about proposed relations with the U.S.-led multinational force. “It’s a distinct NATO mission,” Mr. de Hoop Scheffer told reporters in Brussels. “The multinational force will give protection” and “there should be a relationship between the training mission and multinational force in Iraq.” Officials said NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, U.S. Marine Gen. James Jones, would come up with a recommendation to NATO ambassadors by Sept. 15 on a command system for the allied mission. The initial 40-member mission is to be followed by a larger force. “It will certainly grow into the hundreds very rapidly in the early autumn,” said U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns. (AP 302149 Jul 04)
  
  
• Germany will stick to its refusal to send troops to Iraq regardless of who wins this year’s U.S. presidential election, a senior German official said in an interview published on Saturday. “We are prepared to help with rebuilding Iraq. We are engaged internationally in the war against terrorism, also in military terms as in Afghanistan,” the Foreign Ministry’s top official for relations with Washington, Karsten Voigt, said in an interview with the daily Berliner Zeitung. “For Germany, multi-lateralism is a must. Except in self-defence, a military deployment is unthinkable for us without a mandate from the UN or NATO,” he added. (AP 311639 Jul 04)

OLYMPICS

• Europe’s biggest and longest peacetime security operation went into force on Sunday when “no go” areas were imposed in Athens for the Olympic Games starting in mid-August. “The No’s of August,” the Eleftherotypia newspaper called the security measures and traffic restrictions that will reach into every corner of the city. “This is the biggest operation by the Greek armed forces since World War Two,” said General Vassilis Giannopoulos. Greek newspapers said that as well as the official force, a “private army” of security consultants would be on hand to protect VIPs. (Reuters 010932 GMT Aug 04)

ESDP

• A British career diplomat, Nick Witney, was appointed on Friday as the first head of a new European Defence Agency created to improve European Union military capabilities and defence equipment. He will serve for three years as chief executive, with senior German defence planner Hilmar Linnenkamp as his deputy. (Reuters 301627 GMT Jul 04)

BALKANS

• Bosnia’s future is being put at risk because indicted war crimes suspects from the bloody Balkan ethnic wars continue to escape justice, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Sarajevo. Making a four-hour visit Saturday in the Bosnian capital after a flight from Kuwait, he said that authorities’ inability to capture former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was preventing the country from joining the EU and other continental institutions. (AP 010214 Aug 04)
  
  
• Power would shift more quickly to Kosovo’s local administration as part of an overhaul of the Serbian province’s UN mission recommended by a special UN envoy. A report to Secretary-General Kofi Annan by Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide also recommends a rewrite of a 1999 policy insisting that Kosovo meet a lengthy list of performance benchmarks before the international community can take up the question of its final status. (Reuters 302102 GMT Jul 04)

OTHER NEWS

• Police stormed Moldova’s state radio building, breaking up a sit-in by more than a dozen journalists and lawmakers protesting what they called politically motivated layoffs by the broadcaster, the demonstrators said in Chisinau. The journalists regrouped outside the radio building and shouted anticommunist slogans. They were joined by several hundred protesters waving NATO and EU flags. (AP 011130 Aug 04)
  
  
• Iran on Sunday said it will continue to pursue acquiring nuclear energy and would not succumb to pressure or accept any conditions. A government spokesman, speaking to reporters, said Iran continues to talk to Britain, France and Germany on the use of nuclear energy. Diplomats said that Tehran had resumed building equipment used to make uranium hexaflouride which can be enriched to low levels for power generation or high levels for nuclear weapons. (AP 011506 Aug 04)