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Wars limit U.S. military's ability to react, general warns

By wire services
Published May 3, 2005

WASHINGTON - The concentration of American troops and weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan limits the Pentagon's ability to deal with other potential armed conflicts, the military's highest-ranking officer reported to Congress on Monday. The officer, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed Congress in a classified report that major combat operations elsewhere in the world, should they be necessary, would probably be more protracted and produce higher American and foreign civilian casualties because of the commitment of Pentagon resources in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After a half-dozen Pentagon civilian and military officials discussed the outlines of the report on Monday, as it was delivered to Congress, one government official provided a copy to the New York Times.

Myers cited reduced stockpiles of precision weapons, which were depleted during the invasion of Iraq, and the stress on reserve units, which fulfill the bulk of combat support duties in Iraq, as among the factors that would limit the Pentagon's ability to prevail as quickly as war planners once predicted in other potential conflicts.

Myers was unwavering in his assessment that American forces would win any major combat operation. The armed forces, he concluded, are "fully capable" of meeting all U.S. military objectives.

The general's report appears to provide a slightly different assessment than President Bush offered at a news conference last week when he said the number of American troops in Iraq would not limit Washington's military options elsewhere. But late Monday, the New York Times quoted an unnamed Pentagon official as dismissing any serious contradiction between the president and Myers.

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian on Monday offered peace talks with Beijing, apparently seeking to regain the high ground from a political rival who is on a headline-grabbing visit to China.

Implicit in Chen's speech during a visit to the Marshall Islands was a message to Chinese leaders that they should be talking to him, the elected president, not to Lien Chan, the Nationalist Party leader whom he has twice defeated at the polls.

WASHINGTON - The Organization of American States on Monday elected Chilean Interior Minister Jose Miguel Insulza as secretary-general, filling a post that had been vacant since October.

Insulza also has served as his country's foreign minister and spent a decade in exile until the end of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

Insulza will serve a five-year term and is eligible to be re-elected. He won a drawn-out election to the secretary general's post after two U.S.-backed candidates withdrew.

UNITED NATIONS- The Bush administration said Monday that Iran was trying to build atomic weapons in secret and suggested the international community should respond by taking away Tehran's right to nuclear energy technology.

Other world leaders attending a nuclear conference seemed to dismiss the U.S. call for punitive measures. Instead, they spoke of incentives and negotiations as a way of encouraging the Islamic republic to give up worrisome aspects of its energy program that could be diverted for weapons work.

It was the opening day of a monthlong conference to review and possibly strengthen the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As part of the 1970 deal, the five original nuclear states - the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China - agreed to eventually eliminate their stockpiles.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan suggested delegates "create incentives for states to voluntarily forgo the development" of nuclear energy programs that rely on sensitive technologies. He called on the United States and Russia to move quickly toward reducing the thousands of nuclear weapons in their stockpiles.

JERUSALEM - Natan Sharansky, the onetime symbol of oppressed Soviet Jewry, quit his Cabinet post on Monday to protest Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this summer.

Sharansky, whose views on promoting democracy have won praise from President Bush, said Israel should relinquish Gaza only if the Palestinian government first carries out wide reforms.

The 57-year-old, who spent a decade in the gulag before being freed and emigrating to Israel in 1986, is greatly admired in Israel for his courageous defiance of the Soviet regime, but he has never won much of a political following.

[Last modified May 3, 2005, 01:19:05]