TUESDAY, OCTOBER 09, 2001 THE TIMES OF INDIA
NATO redeploys Mediterranean naval force RUSSELS: NATO said on Tuesday it was redeploying its standing naval force to the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea "to demonstrate alliance resolve" as US-led air strikes in Afghanistan continued. Redeploying the naval force, which had been on exercises around the Spanish island of Majorca since Friday, was one of eight requests from the United States approved by NATO ambassadors last Thursday. It followed approval Monday for the transfer of five NATO E-3A AWACS radar planes from their base in Germany to the United States for "counter-terrorism operations" in US skies. "The movement of elements of the Standing Naval Force Mediterranean to the eastern Mediterranean has been approved ... and they are already under way," a spokesman at NATO headquarters in Brussels told AFP. "The aim is to provide a NATO presence and demonstrate alliance resolve in the eastern Mediterranean," he said, adding that the warships would remain under the command of NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe. The Standing Naval Force Mediterranean consists mainly of frigates from European NATO allies. It represents the core of NATO's multinational maritime force in periods of tension or crisis. Military analysts said the redeployment could free up US naval ships to proceed through the Suez Canal to waters closer to Afghanistan, which has been under sustained US and British attack since Sunday. On Monday, NATO expressed "full support" for US-led operations against the Taliban regime and its so-called "guest" Osama bin Laden, who the United States alleges was behind the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. The 19 transatlantic allies, in a move unprecedented in NATO's 52-year history, had early declared the strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to have been an "armed attack" on all of them. The Standing Naval Force Mediterranean usually consists of one destroyer from Greece, seven frigates from Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Britain and the United States, and a refuelling ship from Germany. During the Gulf War in 1991 it deployed in the eastern Mediterranean to provide a "curtain" for US ships passing through to Suez Canal on their way to the Gulf. ( AFP )
