US general says allies worry Russian war game may be 'Trojan horse'

BERLIN - US allies in eastern Europe and Ukraine are worried that Russia's planned war games in September could be a "Trojan horse" aimed at leaving behind military equipment brought into Belarus, the US Army's top general in Europe said on Thursday.

Russia has sought to reassure NATO that the military exercises will respect international limits on size, but NATO and US official remain wary about their scale and scope.


US Army Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who heads US Army forces in Europe, told Reuters in an interview that allied officials would keep a close eye on military equipment brought in to Belarus for the Zapad 2017 exercise, and whether it was removed later.

"People are worried, this is a Trojan horse. They say, 'We're just doing an exercise,' and then all of a sudden they've moved all these people and capabilities somewhere," he said.

Hodges said he had no indications that Russia had any such plans, but said greater openness by Moscow about the extent of its war games would help reassure countries in eastern Europe.

NATO allies are nervous because previous large-scale Russian exercises employed special forces training, longer-range missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Such tactics were later used in Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine and in its intervention in Syria, NATO diplomats say.

Hodges said the United States and its allies had been very open about a number of military exercises taking place across eastern Europe this summer involving up to 40,000 troops, but it remained unclear if Moscow would adhere to a Cold War-era treaty known as the Vienna document, which requires observers for large-scale exercises involving more than 13,000 troops.

Some NATO allies believe the Russian exercise could number more than 100,000 troops and involve nuclear weapons training, the biggest such exercise since 2013.

Russia has said it would invite observers if the exercise exceeded 13,000 forces.

Hodges said NATO would maintain normal rotations during the Russian war game, while carrying out previously scheduled exercises in Sweden, Poland and Ukraine.

The only additional action planned during that period was a six-week deployment of three companies of 120 paratroopers each to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for "low-level" exercises, Hodges said.

"We want to avoid anything that looks like a provocation. This is not going to be the 'Sharks' and the 'Jets' out on the streets," Hodges said in a reference to the gang fights shown in the 1961 film "West Side Story" set in New York City.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Donald Trump says immigrants pose hidden threat

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump launched new attacks on immigrants Thursday, telling supporters that Somalis and other refugees from "terrorist nations" should be barred entry to the United States.

"We are letting people come in from terrorist nations that shouldn't be allowed because you can't vet them," Trump, who has built his campaign around an anti-immigration platform, said at a rally in Portland, Maine.

"You have no idea who they are. This could be the great Trojan horse of all time," he said, reprising a warning that terrorists including members of the Islamic State extremist group will sneak into the United States as refugees.

"This is a practice that has to stop."

He pointed to the Somali immigrant population as an example of the "thousands" of refugees who have flooded into Maine and other US states and caused problems.

Trump said efforts to resettle Somali refugees -- many of them in Minnesota -- were "having the unintended consequence of creating an enclave of immigrants with high unemployment that is both stressing the state's... safety net and creating a rich pool of potential recruiting targets for Islamist terror groups."

He then listed several immigrants, mostly from Muslim majority countries -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Uzbekistan and Yemen -- who were arrested for conducting or threatening to carry out violent attacks, teaching bomb-making to recruits, and otherwise supporting terror groups.

"We're dealing with animals," he seethed.

Trump caused an uproar last December when he called for a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the United States, and he has harangued his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for seeking to allow many times more refugees into the country than President Barack Obama has.

"Hillary Clinton wants to have them come in by the hundreds of thousands," Trump warned Thursday, to a chorus of boos.

"You're going to have problems like you've never seen."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com