Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

12 August 2004

BALKANS

• Three ethnic Albanians have been arrested for allegedly attacking Serb police officers in a tense region bordering Kosovo, the Beta news agency reported on Wednesday. The three are from the ethnic Albanian village of Veliki Trnovac. The statement said that this month the three refused to allow a police patrol to check their car and identity cards. The three were soon joined by other fellow-ethnic Albanians and allegedly attacked the policemen. (AP 111719 Aug 04)

IRAQ

• With a new UN envoy expected in Baghdad shortly, Security Council members reached agreement on Wednesday on the text of a resolution that will extend the UN mission in Iraq for a year. The council scheduled a vote on the resolution for Thursday morning. The brief draft resolution reaffirms “that the United Nations should play a leading role in assisting the Iraqi people and government in the formation of institutions for a representative government.” (AP 120102 Aug 04)
  
  
• The Hungarian government will decide in October whether to keep its 300-strong transport battalion in Iraq beyond its scheduled departure at the end of this year, a Defence Ministry spokesman said on Wednesday in Budapest. Mr. Istvan Bocskai said that the government would seek parliamentary approval in November for its decision, but added that the government had no formal view on whether the mission should be extended or not. (Reuters 111639 GMT Aug 04)

AFGHANISTAN

• The war against terror was being won in Afghanistan, but the country faced a new danger that threatened the entire international community, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned in Kabul. Speaking at a news conference in the Afghan capital, he said the growing international heroin trade - which originated with opium production in Afghanistan -posed a grave danger to the country’s fledgling democracy. Mr. Rumsfeld visited the headquarters of the UN-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body, where he saw photographs of the 18 candidates. Also soon after his arrival, Mr. Rumsfeld, who is in Afghanistan for just one day, flew by helicopter to Jalalabad to see a U.S.-led military reconstruction project and meet Afghan and U.S. troops. (Reuters 111503 GMT Aug 04)

TERRORISM

• A group claiming links to al Qaeda, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, renewed its threats against Italy on Wednesday and vowed attacks similar to those of Sept. 11, 2001, according to a message on an Islamist Web site. Its authenticity could not be immediately verified. “We won’t underestimate any sign of threat and we will keep the defences of our country high,” Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said on the main evening news on state television. Italian news agency Ansa quoted an interior ministry source as saying that secret services believed a single individual was behind all the threats. (Reuters 111920 GMT Aug 04)