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SHAPE
News Summary & Analysis
6
August 2004
AFGHANISTAN
- According
to AFP, Eurocorps Commander Lt. Gen. Py announced
in Strasbourg Thursday that the corps will take over command
of ISAF in the Afghan capital Kabul next Monday for six months.
“It is an extremely important step for Eurocorps, which
well shows the synergy with NATO,” Gen. Py
reportedly said, describing himself as a “conductor”
whose role was to “put to music” NATO decisions.
Noting that Eurocorps will remain under the political
and military authority of NATO in Kabul, the dispatch
further quotes Gen. Py saying: “Our mission will consist
of increasing the level of security to enable calm and representative
elections.”
IRAQ
-
Amid growing interest in a NATO mission to Iraq, AP reports
Alliance officials said in Brussels Friday the first wave
of NATO’s training mission for Iraqi forces will soon
arrive in Baghdad to start working out logistics with Iraqi
authorities and the U.S.-led coalition. The dispatch
adds that although no exact date for the arrival of the advance
team was given, a NATO official, speaking on condition of
anonymity said “the mission is going to start
in the next coming days.” The official is further
quoted saying: “By being there, they will be
able to offer advice already. It’s not just some sort
of fact-finding mission…. We are beginning a long-term
project, so steps have to be taken in a logical sequence.”
Brussels’ Le Soir observes that despite its
modest ambitions and its small size “the discrete NATO
mission” will mark the first time the Alliance will
have a collective presence in Iraq. Cairo’s
Mena, Aug. 5, quoted unnamed diplomatic sources saying a first
NATO team would head for Baghdad Saturday. “The team
will be the nucleus of a training delegation made of 37-40
persons who would start their mission soon after arrival to
train Iraqi officers and hold consultations with the interim
Iraqi government to set the number of personnel to be trained
at home and those who would be sent abroad for training in
institutions and centers in the EU countries and the United
States,” added the report. “A 40-strong team of
NATO staff officers will soon arrive in Iraq to assess exactly
how the Alliance can help train Iraq’s new security
forces,” reported the BBC World Service, adding: “They
are due to report back by early September so that a decision
can be taken on the scope and content of any NATO training
mission. But some team members will stay on to begin training
top officers, probably at the Defense Ministry in Baghdad.
One NATO diplomat described the proposed officer training
as effectively ‘mentoring’ individual on-the-job
training tailored to Iraq’s needs. It is a small but
controversial step…. NATO argued long and hard
about where this work should take place. While training will
occur at specialist NATO staff colleges in Europe, this mission
will establish the principle that some of it will take place
in Iraq…. But there is still a debate about how the
NATO training mission will be commanded and how it will be
coordinated with similar training undertaken by Americans.
While the Pentagon sees both training missions as essentially
part of the same effort, several other NATO governments want
to see them kept distinct and NATO insiders believe that this
view is likely to prevail.”
TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS
- “With
the transatlantic Alliance still strained by differences over
Iraq, the U.S. and Europe are grappling with a serious new
disagreement—this time over European policy toward China,”
warns the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper notes
that with the EU-China relationship flourishing, the EU is
considering lifting the embargo on arms sales to China it
imposed 15 years ago in response to the Tiananmen Square massacre
in Beijing. It adds that the U.S., which has troops stationed
in Asia, military alliances in the region, and a legal obligation
to help Taiwan defend itself against Chinese attack, has waged
a quiet diplomatic battle to dissuade the EU from taking the
step. The article stresses, however, that Washington fears
the arms embargo could be scrapped as soon as Dec. 8, when
the EU and China meet in The Hague for their annual summit,
so American officials are raising the volume and urgency of
their protests. According to the newspaper, officials
warn that the future shape of the transatlantic Alliance could
be on the line. “The U.S. is in the midst of an ambitious
effort to make its forces ‘interoperable’ with
those of its key European allies through the sharing of the
defense technologies. If the EU lifts the embargo, it would
be hard to assure U.S. officials that advanced military technology
shared with Europe won’t be passed on to China,”
the article quotes a senior State Department official saying.
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