Leavenworth Strategist

In Tallinn, NATO Ministers Search For Solidarity

(RFE/RL) April 22, 2010 By Ahto Lobjakas

A two-day informal NATO foreign ministers' meeting that just kicked off in Tallinn, Estonia, will broadly focus on generating unity on some of the thornier issues facing the alliance.

Chief among these are burden sharing between the United States and the rest of the allies, the alliance's future goals and focus, and threat perception.

Within this context, nuclear deterrence, missile defense, Russia, and the operation in Afghanistan feature prominently on the meeting's agenda.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen identified maintaining and advancing solidarity as the main challenge before the alliance.

Speaking in Tallinn ahead of an alliance foreign ministers' meeting, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen indicated NATO's struggle for a mission and a role in the post-Cold War era has yet to be resolved.

"More than six decades after NATO's creation, solidarity remains the alliance's most precious asset," Rasmussen said. "But like all precious assets, it cannot be taken for granted."

UN troops unlikely to pull out from Congo

(Deutsche Welle)  Next month, France is due to present a draft of a new resolution on the UN mandate for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the UN Security Council. 

Many observers are already asking how the recent violence in Mbandaka in the northwestern province of Equateur, where rebels seized an airport and killed 13 people, will affect the future of the UN's involvement. With more than 20,000 troops, the UN mission (MONUC) is the largest and most expensive on the planet...

Chad, UN at Odds Over Peacekeeping Force

(VOA) Scott Stearns | Dakar31 March 2010

The United Nations and the government of Chad are to wrap up talks on extending a U.N. peacekeeping force in the African country. The two sides disagree over the future size of that force.

Chadian President Idriss Deby wants a rapid withdrawal of soldiers in the peacekeeping force known as MINURCAT.  His government says only several-hundred police officers from the force need stay to guard civilian personnel and facilities responsible for distributing relief supplies.

U.N. negotiators want as many as 1,000 troops to remain in Chad and the Central African Republic.  They are providing security for humanitarian assistance to as many as 250,000  Sudanese refugees and another 250,000 combined Chadian and Central African Republic civilians displaced by their own conflicts.

MINURCAT has already been extended through May 15.  U.N. officials say there has been progress on extending some civilian components of the force, including the training of legal staff.  But if these talks in Ndjamena do not produce a broader extension, most of the soldiers in the force will start drawing down in six weeks.

The U.N. Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Alain Leroy, told the Security Council this month the full MINURCAT force is still needed.