 Lithuania, Belarus ink military cooperation Vilnius (AFP) Oct 27, 2010 - NATO member Lithuania and its non-NATO neighbour Belarus Wednesday inked their first-ever agreement on military cooperation, Lithuania's defence ministry said. "We have taken a historic step. For the first time, Lithuania and Belarus have signed a cooperation agreement," in the military domain, Lithuania's Defence Minister Rasa Jukneviciene said in a press statement. The agreement was signed during a visit by Belarusian Defence Minister Yuri Zhadobin to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. The two neighbours, whose common border stretches over 600 kilometres (373 miles), are to cooperate in the areas of military personnel training, airspace surveillance and military medicine. Although the two ex-Soviet states have been cooperating on military matters since 2005, Wednesday was the first time they signed a formal agreement. "We live in the same region... and we have many common interests," Lithuania's Jukneviciene said. Since 2004, Lithuania's embassy in the Belarusian capital Minsk also serves as the NATO mission in Belarus. In early 2011, the French embassy is to takeover the NATO duties. Both Soviet republics prior to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, Lithuania and Belarus chose different paths. While Lithuania joined the EU and NATO in 2004, Belarus forged close ties with Russia which have recently become strained. |
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned of the "untold costs and an undetermined toll" from nearly a decade of combat, with returning troops suffering from invisible mental wounds and no longer steeped in conventional military training.
He said that the country is "just beginning to come to terms" with the impact of the wars, with the military facing tough challenges as it brings back more troops from Iraq and, eventually, from Afghanistan.
"I believe what we can see today is truly just the tip of the iceberg -- with consequences for our military and veteran health care system, our national employment rate, and even homelessness," Mullen told the Association of the US Army.
"There are many soldiers and veterans coming home for whom the battle hasn't ended," he said.
"For many, it's just the beginning. They face physical and mental injuries, anxiety and depression, changing family dynamics and the extraordinary challenges of post-traumatic stress."
Amiding rising suicide rates among troops, the military had to remove the "stigma" still sometimes associated with mental health problems, to encourage troubled soldiers to ask for help, he said.
And new recruits needed to be taught how to prepare psychologically for the trauma of combat, Mullen said.
"We need to teach soldiers psychological fitness skills -- just as surely as we teach them to march, wear a uniform, or fire a weapon," the admiral said.
With the US economy struggling, Mullen appealed to industry to hire veterans, particularly wounded veterans, saying the country could not afford to repeat the Vietnam war's aftermath, when former soldiers fell through the cracks.
"Some veterans are already having a hard time translating their military experience and talents into viable jobs when they transition out of the service," he said.
"We simply can't afford to lose another generation of veterans to homelessness like we did in the Vietnam era," he said.
After the strain of more than nine years of war, the future of the force would hinge on its ability to retain talented officers, he said.
The US military, however, would have to figure out how to keep soldiers engaged once the exhilaration of combat recedes, he said.
"How do we keep their adrenaline running? How do we keep them engaged constructively?" he said.
The fight against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan -- involving vast numbers of troops -- also had meant traditional military skills have been neglected, and that the armed forces would have to ensure troops honed skills for conventional warfare, the admiral said.
"There are tasks we aren't able to do anymore -- missions that we haven't trained for because we are so heavily engaged," he said.
"Across our armed forces, I worry about young marines who have never deployed aboard ships -- artillery officers who haven't fired a gun in years -- fighter pilots who have not honed their air-to-air skills at all."
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