Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

24 August 2004

IRAQ

• Reporting on the NATO Training Implementation Mission in Iraq (NTIM-I), Radio Free Europe noted that a 50-strong NATO team is visiting Iraq to offer what it may need most: training for security officers to bring back law and order to the country. At the end of the visit, the report added, the group will draft reports to be submitted to NATO leaders on how the organization can help Iraq. Lt. Col. Petter Linqvist, the group’s spokesman, was quoted saying the team had been in close coordination with Iraqi officials and U.S.-led military leaders of the multinational force. “We are here at the request of the Iraqi interim government. One of the first things we did when we came was to establish liaison contact with the Iraqi authorities and also coordinate with the multinational force. So these are the two entities we are in close coordination with,” he reportedly said, adding: “We have received a list of priorities from the Iraqi government, and we will keep on communicating with the Iraqi authorities, with the ministries, to make sure that what we provide is what they need, not what we think they need.” According to the report, he said many questions about NATO’s role remain unclear. These include how many members of the Iraqi security forces will need training and to what degree, and how many NATO soldiers will be based in Iraq and who will pay the bill. All these, he was quoted saying, are decisions that need to be made by NATO leaders. The report stressed that for now, the Iraqi are glad to receive whatever help NATO can offer. “After the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority took power in Iraq, several hundred Iraqi security men and women were sent to various countries for training, but Iraqi officials say more is needed,” it said.

UNITED STATES-TROOP BASING

• Paris’ France Inter Radio carried an interview with French Defense Minister Alliot-Marie in which she was asked whether President Bush’s plan for a reduction of U.S. forces in Europe would help stimulate the construction of European defense. Ms. Alliot-Marie was carried saying: “Indeed I think that a number of countries which relied solely on NATO and the protection afforded by U.S. troops will suffer an electric shock of sorts and that this will be the opportunity for them to address what some Americans have been saying for some time, that Europe must be able to protect itself. I think there may indeed be a change of mind-set for some, we’ll see at the next meeting of European defense ministers in October.”

  In a contribution to the Christian Science Monitor, Robert E. Hunter, U.S. ambassador to NATO from 1993 to 1998, and a senior adviser at the Rand Corporation, writes that that beyond some point that no one knows, fewer U.S. troops in Europe will mean less leadership and less influence, and that cannot be good for the U.S. or the Alliance.
  The allies understand the need for some realignment of forces over the next several years, Hunter says, adding, however, that President Bush’s announcement could have been timed better. “Not everyone in Europe is yet convinced that, following the worst crisis in transatlantic relations in a half century, U.S. policy has reverted to cooperation with allies. More important is the role that U.S. deployments play in providing glue for the NATO Alliance. Fifteen years after the end of the cold war, Allied Command Operations is still history's only fully integrated military command structure. Twenty-six allies still see enough in common, strategically, to prize the day-to-day cooperation that provides not just sinews for joint military action but a prejudice in favor of meeting threats together. The allies still want a U.S. general to be Supreme Allied Commander Europe. In terms of overall U.S. security posture, therefore, enough forces need to be based permanently in Europe to keep Allied Command Operations fully up and running, with daily interactions of thousands of people--planning, training, deploying, sometimes fighting, and seeing their destinies as bound together,” Hunter stresses.

OTHER NEWS

• AP quotes officials saying a Russian An-124 cargo plane arrived at Melsbroek military airport outside Brussels Monday and began loading with material for the Belgian contingent serving with ISAF, replacing a Ukrainian aircraft held in a dispute with a Cypriot energy company. The dispatch reports officials at SHAPE said the Alliance had no direct contact with the Ukrainian owners of the plane and NATO had dealt with a charter firm which had subcontracted to the Ukrainians to fly the equipment to Afghanistan. According to the dispatch, NATO officials also said the charter company had called in the Russian firm to replace the Ukrainians without affecting the contract with the Alliance. “NATO has chartered another An-124 Antonov cargo plane to carry equipment from Brussels to peacekeepers in Kabul in replacement of the Ukrainian aircraft impounded in Brussels,” says a related article in La Libre Belgique. The aircraft belongs to the Russian company Volga-Dnepr, the only other civilian An-124 operator. The contract was signed by SHAPE, the daily adds.