----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2000 5:52 AM Subject: [STOPNATO] NATO passes Kosovo baton to Euro force STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG [See final paragraph] http://www.the-times.co.uk (World) The Times (UK) April 15 2000 EUROPE Nato passes Kosovo baton to Euro force FROM MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR, IN BRUSSELS THE Eurocorps, which Britain used to deride as a FrancoGerman anti-Nato organisation, is to take over command of the Kosovo peacekeeping operation next week. Although it will operate within the Nato structure set up in the Yugoslav province, it will be the first time that a purely European military headquarters will be given the opportunity to run a largely alliance mission. When the Eurocorps, now consisting of troops from France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg, was set up in the 1980s, Britain refused to join, accusing Paris of trying to undermine Nato. Now, however, with Tony Blair pushing for a strong European security and defence identity, the arrival of a Eurocorps headquarters in Pristina is viewed by London in a different light. There are still no British troops assigned to the Eurocorps, but a colonel will serve as a liaison officer with the new HQ in Kosovo and the 3,300 British soldiers in the province will come under its command. The previously Nato-led peacekeepers will come under the command of Lieutenant-General Juan Ortuna, of Spain, with Major-General Marcel Wirth, of France, as his deputy. Although the Eurocorps headquarters is taking over from Nato's Landcent HQ, it will still operate within a largely alliance format, with most of the serving soldiers contributed by Nato members. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Nato Secretary-General, predicted yesterday that the handover would be carried out smoothly and he denied reports that General Wesley Clark, the American Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, who remains in overall charge of the Kosovo operation, had reservations about Eurocorps taking over the role. The Eurocorps element of the headquarters staff in Pristina will comprise 335 military personnel. Nato sources said that the significance of the change was that although a non-Nato headquarters was moving into Pristina, it would have to rely on alliance troops. At the heart of the debate about the European Union's desire to act militarily on its own without the Americans has been the EU's acceptance that it will need Nato support to operate credibly. In Serbia yesterday, hundreds of students set out from Novi Sad to join a a protest in Belgrade by up to 75,000 people against President Milosevic organised by the country's opposition. In another development yesterday, Ibrahim Rugova, the moderate Kosovo leader, said in Berlin in an interview with Der Spiegel that Kosovo could find itself again at war if it is not granted independence. The ethnic Albanian leader also backed the notion of a "Greater Albania", raising the spectre that violence may spill out of the breakaway province into neighbouring countries, including Macedonia. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send online invitations with Yahoo! Invites. http://invites.yahoo.com ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Advertisement: Workstation with Monitor under $800! So, you just heard that you need to add how many new workstations by the end of next week? Check out the bundle below. It includes everything you need to get everyone up and running quickly. http://www.listbot.com/links/cdw5
