Wist u dat de EU Marine schepen heeft?

Valentine Julien16 december 2008 – 00:22

Ze lanceert op 8 dec een missie naar Somalie. Ze heeft zelfs 3000 manschappen op het land.In Lissabon in 2000 bespraken de ministers het plan om een apparaat uit te bouwen zoals dat van de Amerikanen dat in staat is gelijkaardige operaties uit te voeren, eventueel samen met hen om zodoende de olie en de grondstoffen, te bewaken. Sinds de top van Lissabon is Europa op weg naar het Amerikaanse model. Ze volgt het advies van Robert Kagan, strateeg van de politiek van de Verenigde Staten. Kagan zegt: "Het is niet realistisch te denken dat de Europeanen hun statuut van internationale grootmacht kunnen herwinnen als de Europese staten niet bereid zijn een belangrijk deel van de middelen die ze in hun sociale programma's gepompt hebben, te transfereren naar militaire programma's." De wapen industrie haalde een slag in huis.

AFP - Dec 6, 2008

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ihkIEpLaXyw3xv09oKtlG...

BRUSSELS (AFP) — The European Union is set to launch its first-ever naval operation on Monday, with six warships and three surveillance planes patrolling pirate infested seas in the Horn of Africa.

The EU vessels face the daunting task of covering an area of around one million square kilometres, in waters that have seen nearly 100 ships attacked by pirates this year.
And the mission's ability to serve any meaningful purpose -- beyond a deterrant role -- remains under a cloud, with critics saying the only way to beat piracy is to start the battle on land, in lawless Somalia.

For a year, vessels from at least eight countries -- Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden -- will escort aid ships and carry out anti-piracy duties under British Admiral Phillip Jones.
With a headquarters in Northwood near London, the fleet will initially be led off the coast of Somalia by Greek Admiral Antonios Popaioannou, with a Spaniard and then a Dutch officer taking over after three month terms.

While the EUNAVFOR Atalanta mission officially starts Monday -- taking over from four NATO vessels in the waters -- it is unlikely to be up to full strength before the end of the month.

"We have responsibility there to escort, and to deter, and to protect, and those things are going to be done with very robust rules of engagement," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said Wednesday, at NATO headquarters.

Those rules of engagement will be endorsed by EU foreign ministers at a meeting in Brussels Monday.

The challenge is formidable.

More than a dozen foreign merchant vessels and their crew are currently being held by gunmen in the area where the northeast tip of the Somali coast juts into the Indian Ocean.

The pirates, heavily armed and using high-powered speedboats, prey there on a key maritime route leading to the Suez Canal through which an estimated 30 percent of the world's oil transits.

They hold ships for weeks for large ransoms paid by governments or owners.

The European Community Shipowners' Association said that it has asked the EU to pay particular attention to boats that it deems "vulnerable", either because they are too slow or too low in the water, allowing easy boarding.

"It's a big region, a big zone," Solana conceded.

Another problem is the legal puzzle that arises once pirates are captured.

Only a few navies can actually catch and try suspects, and of those none are keen to do so except on a case by case basis. On top of that, EU nations cannot turn them over to countries where they might face the death penalty.

France, for instance -- which holds the EU's rotating presidency -- is a historic maritime power but laws on piracy were cleaned out of its penal code in October 2007 and it will have to reintroduce them.

Beyond these dilemmas, ships alone are unlikely to do the job.

Experts and officials in the region say the only way to combat the problem is to attack the roots, by tackling the poverty and insecurity in Somalia itself.

"You don't stop piracy on the seas. You stop piracy on the land," NATO's top commander General John Craddock said last week.

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin agrees.

"The pirates are not fish who just sprang up out of the sea," he said. "They came out of Somalia. It is far-fetched to try to clamp down on piracy without first having put the situation in mainland Somalia under control."

http://www.mil.be/def/news/index.asp?LAN=nl&ID=1686
08/10/08
Carabiniers-Grenadiers klaar voor Europa

In Salisbury, het zuidwesten van Engeland, stoomde het Regiment Carabiniers Prins Boudewijn - Grenadiers uit Leopoldsburg zich van 22 september tot 7 oktober 2008 klaar om binnenkort deel uit te maken van de European Union Battle Group, een internationale strijdmacht onder Europese vlag.
In de Britse militaire basis Knook Camp trainden zo'n vijfhonderd militairen in pelotonsaanvallen en het vuren met scherpe munitie. Ook de langeafstandswapens, het mortiergeschut en het antitankwapen Milan kwamen in het oefenprogramma aan bod.

Voor de fuseliers was het grootste fictieve oefendorp in Europa, Cope Hill Down, dan weer een ideale plek om het gevecht in stedelijke omgeving in te oefenen (MOUT-trainingen) .

Het uitgestrekte terrein op een steenworp van de middeleeuwse rotsformatie Stonehenge bood de chauffeurs van de LMV-jeeps (Light Multirole Vehicle) de mogelijkheid om het nieuwe wielvoertuig tot het uiterste te testen.

Bron:
http://www.stopusa.be/scripts/texte.php?section=BD&langue=2&id=23156

Steun de nietigverklaring aan het grondwettelijk hof van de instemming met het Lissabon verdrag.
www.onzezeg.be