Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

30 August 2004

AFGHANISTAN

• The governor of Heart urged Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday to put on trial a renegade commander whose forces swept through the province before submitting to a U.S. brokered ceasefire this month. How U.S.-backed Karzai deals with commander Amanullah Khan will be crucial to the number of votes he gets from Heart. On Friday, the government said Amanullah, described as a Taliban chieftain by his enemies, had been brought to Kabul but refused to say if he was being held under some form of arrest. "We expect the central government to put him on trial for starting the fighting and killing people," Sayed Nasir Alawi, a spokesman for Herat's Governor Ismail Khan, told Reuters. He said it was the government's duty to disarm Amanullah's militia, which under the terms of the ceasefire withdrew to Shindand, the site of a sprawling former Soviet airbase, some 125 km south of Herat City. (Reuters 281234 GMT Aug 04)

RUSSIA

• NATO on Friday condemned the downing of two Russian airliners as an apparent terrorist attack. "I condemn in the strongest possible terms the apparent act of barbaric terrorism ... resulting in the crash of two Russian passenger aircraft, and the senseless loss of innocent lives," said NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. The NATO statement came after Russia's Federal Security Service said preliminary information indicated at least one of the near simultaneous crashes on Tuesday was the result of a terrorist act. De Hoop Scheffer said NATO and Russia would be "relentless" in responding to the "scourge" of terrorism. (AP 271405 Aug 04)

EU-IRAQ

• Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot has invited Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to attend a EU summit in early November, Dutch news agency ANP reported on Sunday. Bot, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, was on a one-day visit to Baghdad to discuss how the bloc could strengthen its support for Iraq. ANP quoted Bot's spokesman as saying the Iraqi government was "very grateful for the EU's support and very interested in working together. (Reuters 291500 GMT Aug 04)

OLYMPICS

• The cost to Athens of making the Olympic Games safe from attack was substantially more than $1 billion and was Europe's biggest and longest peacetime security operation. There was no immediate way of knowing if the $1 billion was merited. There were no reports of planned atrocities deterred. The problem now is whether every bidding city in the future will have to emulate Greece's expensive blueprint. "The security environment has obviously changed," said an official from NATO. "These Games are not taking place in the same environment that they did four years ago, let alone 20 years ago." NATO would consider helping China with security for the 2008 Beijing Games "if a request came", the official said. "Providing security for the Olympics is something we're all interested in." But it would seem unlikely that China, with military manpower availability of 208 million, will need NATO's help with the next Games, whether or not al Qaeda is still a global menace. (Reuters 300030 GMT Aug 04)
  
• U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell canceled a weekend visit to attend the closing ceremony of the Olympics, prompting Greek communists who had organized anti-American protests in central Athens to claim victory Saturday. Greece's foreign ministry said Powell told his Greek counterpart, Petros Moliviatis, that "urgent responsibilities" prevented him from carrying out the visit, which was to include meetings with U.S. Olympic athletes and government leaders. Powell also thanked Moliviatis "for the especially successful and secure organization of the games." In Washington, State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said the protests played no role in the decision and that the visit was called off because of "the press of business" in Washington. "We consider that our opposition to his visit contributed to his 'press of business,"' said Antonis Kolovos, a teacher, as he marched through central Athens. "NATO, out of the Olympics!" the protesters chanted, a reference to the alliance's role in helping provide security for the games the most costly in Olympic history with a budget of -1.2 billion. "It is an enormous victory of the anti-war movement that managed to cancel the visit of the arch-killer Powell," Yiannis Sifahakis, the organizer of Friday night's demonstration, told AP. (AP 281204 Aug 04)