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subject: UK: US shield divides allies? Brazil-where's the coffee?
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>UK News / US missile shield could divide allies, says Guthrie /
Richard Norton-Taylor
>US missile shield could divide allies, says Guthrie
by -Richard Norton-Taylor
>
>General Sir Charles Guthrie, Chief of the Defence Staff, warned last
week that the United States was planning a radical rethink of the
shape and role of its armed forces - including its plan for a
national anti-missile shield - with serious implications for Britain
and Europe.
>The Americans talked as though "peacekeeping is for wimps", he told
the Guardian in a wide-ranging interview where he warned of a
doomsday scenario with Washington's national missile defence system
plans driving a wedge between Europe and the US.>Speaking on his last
day in office as head of Britain's armed forces, he also made plain
his strong opposition to women fighting alongside men in frontline
combat.
>The Bush administration was moving towards light, flexible forces
that can "get there quicker but not stay around for ever", Sir
Charles said. He added: "The Americans talk about the warrior ethic
and . . . that peacekeeping is for wimps."
>He warned that the US had different preoccupations from the
Europeans. For them, he said, Taiwan, Korea and Osama bin Laden, the
Islamic militant extremist living in Afghanistan, were more important
than the Balkans. Russia, he added, had similar preoccupations. At a
recent meeting Sir Charles's Russian opposite number, Anatoly
Kvashin, had spoken of nothing other than the spread of Islam in the
Caucasus and Afghanistan.
>However, Sir Charles also spoke of the potentially serious threats
posed by the US national missile shield project. "It could be very
divisive for the transatlantic alliance if the Russians thought
Europe was on their side," he said referring to strong opposition to
the plan in France and Germany.
>The Russians and the Americans had to talk through the shield
proposal "very carefully" if a new nuclear race was to be avoided, he
said. Sir Charles admitted that the Government would probably be
asked by Washington to allow the upgrading of the Fylingdales radar
station in North Yorkshire for the US project. That would raise
serious questions, and would reawaken what he called the whole
nuclear debate. It would be terrible, he added, if the Russians
became more nationalistic and were able to drive a wedge between
Europe and the US.
>He castigated international organisations for not helping to restore
>stability in Kosovo quickly enough. "One pace behind [Nato troops]
should have been civil policemen, doctors, judges, even tax
collectors," Sir Charles said. "Where the hell was Mrs Sadako Ogata
[then UN high commissioner for refugees] when we went in?" he asked.
"We can't go around as the world's policeman."
>Sir Charles defended European Union plans for joint peacekeeping
operations so long as they led to real improvements in the military
capability of Britain's European allies and did not duplicate Nato -
an eventuality he described as "silly and perhaps impossible" despite
>suspicions of French intentions. If the Europeans were not prepared
to pool their forces they would be "in dead trouble", he said.
