Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

17 August 2004

U.S. TROOP BASING

• President Bush announced on Monday plans to bring home up to 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia within a decade in a major realignment. “The world has changed a great deal and our posture must change with it,” President Bush said in Cincinnati. He said his goal was to ease the burden on U.S. troops, but the plan offered no immediate relief to more than 140,000 American troops facing extended deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the Pentagon, defence officials said a “significant portion” of the 60,000 to 70,000 troops and 100,000 family members and civilian personnel in question would come out of Europe, including about 30,000 troops in two heavy divisions in Germany. They said moves would not begin until at least 2006 after decisions are made on new domestic base closings, and that a brigade of Army Stryker armoured vehicles with 5,000 troops would be deployed to Germany as part of the U.S. shift away from ponderous forces toward mobility. A senior State Department official said troop reductions in Asia would be “not very dramatic” but gave no details. (Reuters 162005 GMT Aug 04)
  
  
• Defense Secretary Rumsfeld updated his Russian counterpart over the weekend on U.S. plans to shift its forces stationed around the globe, in some cases potentially bringing them closer to Russia’s borders. Donald Rumsfeld and Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov met over a two-day period in St. Petersburg on a variety of security issues, including the U.S. plans to reorient is forces away from its Cold War alignment and toward one aimed at fighting the war on Islamic terrorist groups. While there is no chance American troops would be based on Russian soil, Mr. Rumsfeld said “they have an interest” in the matter, presumably because some of the countries the United States is negotiating with are former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact states. (AP 152132 Aug 04)

BALKANS

• The government official in charge of relations with the European Union resigned Monday, citing a lack of consensus among leading politicians to meet reforms required for EU membership. Milica Delevic-Djilas told Belgrade’s independent B-92 radio station that she offered her resignation to President Marovic because “there is no agreement among political factors about the country’s way to the European Union.” There was no immediate word on who would replace her. (AP 161556 Aug 04)
  
  
• The status of UN-run Kosovo must be resolved for there to be stability in the region, the province’s new UN governor said on his arrival on Sunday. “I firmly believe there will be no normalisation, no stability in the western Balkans, unless the issue of Kosovo is resolved,” Danish diplomat Soren Jessen-Petersen told reporters at Pristina airport. (Reuters 151542 GMT Aug 04)

AFGHANISTAN

• Afghan government troops intervened in the country’s latest outbreak of deadly fighting between warlords, flying from the capital to the far west on U.S. and NATO airplanes to retake an air base contested in the violence. While the soldiers seized the contested airbase at Shindand, battles continued between the forces of Herat Governor Ismail Khan and rival warlords. A statement from President Karzai’s office said he was “pleased” with the swift action
  of the army and that further fighting by the militias would not be tolerated. (AP 160106 Aug 04)
  
  
• Afghan President Hamid Karzai vowed in comments published on Tuesday to create a clean, efficient government that serves the people rather than itself if he were re-elected in a landmark election in October. In an interview with the Financial Times he said his next administration would be free of the interest groups that many Afghans and foreign allies feel have frustrated the efforts of his current government. (Reuters 170255 GMT Aug 04)

IRAQ

• The core of a NATO mission aimed at training Iraqi security forces has arrived in Iraq, the NATO command in Naples said in a statement late on Saturday. The mission, known as NATO Training Implementation Mission in Iraq, is led by Major General Hilderink of the Netherlands and will initially consist of around 50 staff from several NATO countries. “The Alliance ... will contribute to the goal shared by the entire international community: to help Iraq provide for its own peace and security,” the statement read. (Reuters 150931 GMT Aug 04)

TERRORISM

• U.S. and Pakistani officials believe al Qaeda operatives held a meeting in March that could have been a key planning session similar to one that led to the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. cities, Time magazine reported. The magazine said in its Monday edition that the “summit” was held in the Waziristan region of Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told Time that the discovery of the March meeting in Pakistan had exposed the “second string” leadership of al-Qaeda and was “extremely significant.” (Reuters 160749 GMT Aug 04)