NATO Announces End of Iraq Training Mission

BRUSSELS - NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Dec. 12 announced that a mission to train Iraqi security forces will end at the turn of the year.

"The North Atlantic Council has decided to undertake the permanent withdrawal of the NATO Training Mission-Iraq personnel from Iraq by 31 December 2011," Rasmussen said in a statement.

"Agreement on the extension of this successful program did not prove possible despite robust negotiations conducted over several weeks," Rasmussen said.The news provided confirmation after Iraq's top security adviser Falah al-Fayadh told AFP of the decision in an interview aboard a flight transporting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to Washington.

On Nov. 29, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Iraq was studying a contract to extend NATO's presence in Iraq beyond year's end but noted that such a deal would not grant its troops immunity from prosecution.

The failure to agree on immunity from prosecution closely mirrors Iraq's refusal to grant U.S. soldiers similar protections earlier this year, sinking a potential deal between the two countries that means all American soldiers left in Iraq will leave by year's end.

The NATO mission trained more than 5,000 military personnel and more than 10,000 police in Iraq.

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Iraq has built up forces more than 900,000 strong, including an army that U.S. and Iraqi officials reckon is capable of dealing with internal threats, despite the violence.

About 6,000 U.S. troops remain stationed in the country on three bases, down from peaks of nearly 170,000 soldiers and 505 bases.

Security leaders roundly acknowledge, though, that the country is incapable of defending its borders, airspace and territorial waters.

Austria Balks at Selling Old Tanks to Canada

VIENNA - Austria is in talks to sell 40 secondhand Leopard 2A4 tanks back to their German manufacturer after Vienna balked at the Canadian military buying them, a press report said Dec. 12.

Austrian Defence Ministry spokesman Michael Bauer confirmed only that talks with the firm, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, were "going well, although nothing has been signed yet."

The Austrian daily Kronen-Zeitung said the Canadian military had also expressed interest in buying the 15-year-old tanks, which Krauss-Maffei will buy back for 400,000 euros ($532,300) each and then modernize.

"But that would have meant so much red tape, since the Canadians are fighting in Afghanistan, meaning that the sale would not have been approved," the paper cited an unnamed army insider as saying.

This created consternation among some partners in the NATO military alliance, although "as luck would have it" Canada decided it was no longer interested, the daily added.

The paper said Austria bought the tanks for 1.3 million euros each in 1996.

Japan Launches Spy Satellite

TOKYO - Japan launched a new spy satellite into orbit Dec. 12 amid concerns over North Korea's missile program and to monitor natural disasters in the region, officials said.

The Japanese H-2A rocket carrying an information-gathering radar satellite lifted off at 10:21 a.m. local time from the Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan.

"The rocket was launched successfully," said Toshiyuki Miura, a spokesman for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which built the satellite and worked on the launch with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

"The satellite was separated into orbit around the Earth later," Miura added.

The government decided to build an intelligence-gathering system after North Korea launched a missile in 1998 that flew over the Japanese archipelago and into the Pacific, shocking many in Japan.

In defiance of international pressure, North Korea launched what was believed to be a three-stage Taepodong-2 missile in April 2009, with an estimated range of 6,700 kilometers (4,100 miles).

Japan has three operating optical satellites. Two radar ones were successfully placed into orbit, but both broke down later. Another optical satellite was launched in September but is not yet functioning.

Demand for land surveillance grew, meanwhile, after Japan's March 11 quake and tsunami, which killed some 20,000 people and crippled cooling systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, northeast of Tokyo, causing reactor meltdowns.

"The project is aimed at boosting security and monitoring land in case of sizable natural disasters like the one in March," a government official said, adding that the current three satellites were used to track the March calamity.

"If everything goes smoothly, it will be the first radar satellite under the program," the official said. "With the radar satellite, we can introduce wider usage of the system."

Radar satellites are able to capture images at night and in cloudy weather, something that optical satellites cannot.

The latest satellite cost some 39.8 billion yen ($512 million) to develop, while the launch cost about 10.3 billion yen, Kyodo News reported.

JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy had originally planned to launch the satellite Dec. 11, but it was postponed due to bad weather.

U.S. Vacates Air Base in Pakistan: Officials

QUETTA, Pakistan - The United States vacated a Pakistani airbase following a deadline given by Islamabad in the wake of anger over NATO air strikes last month that killed 24 soldiers, officials said Dec. 11.

A U.S. AIR Force plane carrying U.S. personnel and equipment prepare to take off from Pakistan's Shamsi airbase on Dec. 11. (Inter Services Public Relations via AFP)

Pakistan's military said in a statement that the last flight carrying U.S. personnel and equipment had left Shamsi airbase, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, completing a process that began last week.

Islamabad's fragile alliance with the United States crashed to new lows in the wake of the Nov. 26 NATO air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and which the Pakistan military called a deliberate attack.

The base was widely believed to have been used in covert CIA drone attacks against the Taliban and al-Qaida commanders in northwest Pakistan's tribal areas, which border Afghanistan.

"The control of the base has been taken over by the Army," the statement said.

A senior security official requesting anonymity earlier told AFP: "The Americans have vacated the Shamsi air base and it has been handed over to the Pakistani security forces."

Another official in Baluchistan confirmed that the last batch of U.S. officials left in two flights on Dec. 11.

Following the November air strikes, Pakistan closed two border crossings to Afghanistan to U.S. and NATO supplies and gave American personnel until Dec. 11 to leave Shamsi airbase.

U.S. Ambassador to Islamabad Cameron Munter told a Pakistan television channel last week: "We are complying with the request."

A security official said the U.S. aircraft left the Pakistani airfield around 3:00 pm with the remaining group of 32 U.S. officials and material.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Dec. 4 expressed condolences to Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari for the soldier deaths and said the NATO airstrikes that killed them were not a "deliberate attack."

But the incident has rocked Washington's alliance with its counter terrorism ally Islamabad, though officials say neither country can afford a complete break in relations.

U.S. officials and intelligence analysts have said the covert drone war would not be affected by the closure of the base as Washington could fly Predator and Reaper drones out of air fields in neighboring Afghanistan. But the Shamsi air base was supposed to be particularly useful for flights hampered by poor weather conditions.

Islamabad has tacitly consented to the covert U.S. drone campaign, which many Pakistanis see as a violation of their country's sovereignty.

Nearly half of all cargo bound for NATO-led forces runs through Pakistan. Roughly 140,000 foreign troops, including about 97,000 Americans, rely on supplies from outside Afghanistan for the decade-long war effort.

Pakistan has shut off the border over previous incidents, partly to allay popular outrage, but the latest closure had entered a third week.

Islamabad has so far refused to take part in a U.S. investigation into the deadly November air strikes, and decided to boycott the Bonn Conference on the future of Afghanistan earlier this month.

Berlin to Start Afghan Troop Pull-Out in Februaryger

BERLIN - Germany, which has over 5,000 troops in Afghanistan, will withdraw 200 soldiers at the start of February, a German weekly reported Dec. 11.

Germany plans to whittle its forces in Afghanistan to 4,900 next year against 5,350 at present. The NATO-led forces are due to be pulled out in 2014.

Berlin is drawing up its withdrawal plans, which will start on Feb. 1 and involve 200 troops, Bild am Sonntag said, without naming any sources.

Germany, which has the third-biggest force in Afghanistan behind the United States and Britain, said at the start of the year that it aimed to begin pulling its military forces out, eyeing 2014 for complete withdrawal.

Polls have shown the mission, the first major Bundeswehr deployment outside of Europe since World War II, has been consistently unpopular in the country.

5,000 Surface-to-Air Missiles Secured in Libya

SIDI BIN NUR, Libya - A top U.S. official said Dec. 11 that a team of U.S. and Libyan bomb-disposal specialists has secured about 5,000 surface-to-air missiles stockpiled during the regime of Moammar Gadhafi.

"We have identified, disbanded and secured more than 5,000 MANPADS (Man-Portable Air Defense Systems), while thousands more have been destroyed during NATO bombing," Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs told a group of reporters.

Dozens of these missiles were detonated in the sea, off the coast of Sidi Bin Nur village, east of Tripoli, as Shapiro, one a one-day visit to Libya, witnessed the event from the shore.

A joint U.S. and Libyan team of bomb-disposal experts has been working for several months now to find these missing missiles which are seen as potential threat to civil aviation. Gadhafi had a stockpile of 20,000 shoulder-fired missiles before the revolt against him broke out in February.

"We are working side by side with the TNC to reduce the threat of these loose weapons," Shapiro said after talks in Tripoli with officials from the ruling National Transitional Council, the interior and defense ministries.

There is a "serious concern about the threat posed by MANPADS ... about the potential threat MANPADS can pose to civil aviation. However our efforts witht he NTC to reduce these threats are already paying off."

Shapiro said contractors on the ground were still in the process of assessing how many missiles are still missing. Libya, under Gadhafi, was reportedly the country with the biggest stock of MANPADS outside of nations that produce these weapons.

The missiles, mainlySAM-7, were acquired in the 1970s and 1980s.

Shapiro said the United States has already spent $6 million in its efforts to secure these weapons.

NATO Denies Iraq Report of Withdrawal: Official

BRUSSELS - NATO denied an assertion by Iraq's national security advisor on Dec. 11 that it had decided to withdraw its mission there at the end of the year after Baghdad refused to grant it legal immunity.

"There hasn't been a decision yet," an official at NATO headquarters in Brussels said, while acknowledging that the question of the mission's legal standing was an issue.

"When they ask us to extend the mission, we need to see that the same legal framework will extend as well," the official said on condition of anonymity.

"We remain hopeful that a solution will be found and that we'll be able to say yes to the Iraqi request to extend our mission, based on the legal framework that we (have) had since 2009," the official added.

The official was responding to remarks earlier on Dec. 11 by Iraq's National Security Adviser Falah al-Fayadh who said the decision had already been taken, because Baghdad had refused to grant the force legal immunity.

The failure to agree on immunity from prosecution closely mirrors Iraq's refusal to grant U.S. soldiers similar protections earlier this year.

That sank a potential deal between the two countries to keep U.S. soldiers in the country beyond the end of the year.