Tag Archives: U.S. Military

U.S. sending carrier, bombers to Mideast is “psychological warfare”: Iran

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran’s top security body dismissed as “psychological warfare” a U.S. announcement that a carrier strike group and bombers are being sent to the Middle East as a message to Tehran, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Tuesday.

Tensions rose on the eve of the anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from world powers’ 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Tehran is likely to revive part of its halted nuclear program on Wednesday in response to the U.S. move but does not plan to pull out of the agreement itself, state media said.

U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said on Sunday the United States was deploying the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East in a warning over alleged threats by Iranian forces.

“Bolton’s statement is a clumsy use of a burnt-out happening for (the purpose of) psychological warfare,” Tasnim quoted Keyvan Khosravi, spokesman for the Supreme National Security Council, as saying. Khosravi said the carrier had arrived in the Mediterranean weeks ago.

Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said on Monday he had approved dispatching the carrier strike group and bombers due to indications of a “credible threat by Iranian regime forces”. He gave no details of underlying intelligence.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter: “If U.S. and clients don’t feel safe, it’s because they’re despised by the people of the region – blaming Iran won’t reverse that.”

Iran’s state-run Press TV earlier said: “The deployment seems to be a ‘regularly scheduled’ one by the U.S. Navy, and Bolton has just tried to talk it up.”

JITTERS

Separately, a military adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asserted that the United States was “neither willing nor capable” of military action against Iran, the semi-official news agency ISNA reported.

Brigadier General Hossein Dehgan said Washington would have a hard time convincing world opinion and regional countries to accept an all-out war against Iran, and to mobilize resources for such a conflict.

Iranian newspapers and commentators have dismissed Washington’s announcement as a “bluff” and “empty rhetoric”.

However, as jitters over the war of words rose, Iran’s rial currency extended its fall on Tuesday, hovering around a seven-month low against the U.S. dollar on the unofficial market, foreign exchange websites reported.

The rial declined to 154,000 to the dollar on Tuesday, compared to 150,500 rials on Monday, touching its lowest value since early October 2018, according to Bonbast.com.

Last week, President Donald Trump’s administration said it would end waivers for countries buying Iranian oil in an attempt to reduce Iran’s crude exports to zero following Washington’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

The administration also blacklisted Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran said last month it was prepared for a U.S. decision to end the waivers as the Revolutionary Guards repeated a threat to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf if Tehran were barred from using it.

Around 30 percent of the world’s seaborne oil exports is shipped through the strait.

While neither Shanahan nor Bolton elaborated on the gist of U.S. intelligence, other U.S. officials told Reuters there were

“multiple, credible threats” against U.S. forces on land,

including in Iraq, by Iran and proxy forces and at sea.

(Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Sexual assaults spike in U.S. military, hit new record: Pentagon

Women Soldiers Image by Mario Cesar on Pixiebay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Defense Department said on Thursday the estimated number of sexual assaults in the military climbed nearly 38 percent in 2018 compared with a survey two years earlier, data that critics say laid bare broken Pentagon promises of a crackdown.

The Pentagon said there were 6,053 reports of sexual assaults last year, according to an anonymous, bi-annual survey. It is a record number and the highest since the U.S. military began collecting this kind of survey data in 2004.

Taking into consideration unreported cases as well, the military survey estimated 20,500 male and female service members experienced some kind of sexual assault last year. The estimated number in 2016 was 14,900.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democratic presidential candidate who has been an advocate for overhauling rules for prosecution of sex crimes in the U.S. military, said the data made clear that it was time for Congress to act.

“Sexual assaults continue to increase dramatically while the number of cases going to trial goes down,” she said. “The status quo is not working.”

The report found that the odds of a military woman between the ages of 17 and 20 being sexually assaulted was one in eight.

“It is time for Congress to stop giving the failing military leadership the benefit of doubt and pass real reform empowering military prosecutors. Enough is enough,” said Don Christensen, a retired colonel and former chief Air Force prosecutor who now leads the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders.

The Pentagon said it was going to make changes to deal with the spike.

“To put it bluntly, we are not performing to the standards

and expectations we have for ourselves or for each other,” acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said in a memo. “This is unacceptable. We cannot shrink from facing the challenge head-on. We must, and will, do better.”

In a briefing on Thursday, a senior official told reporters that the Pentagon was looking to make sexual harassment a stand-alone crime.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Bill Trott)

Iran designates as terrorists all U.S. troops in Middle East

FILE PHOTO: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks during a meeting with tribal leaders in Kerbala, Iraq, March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Abdullah Dhiaa Al-Deen/File Photo

LONDON (Reuters) – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani signed a bill into law on Tuesday declaring all U.S. forces in the Middle East terrorists and calling the U.S. government a sponsor of terrorism.

The bill was passed by parliament last week in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s decision this month to designate Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organization.

It was not clear what the impact of the new law might be on U.S. forces or their operations.

Rouhani instructed the ministry of intelligence, ministry of foreign affairs, the armed forces, and Iran’s supreme national security council to implement the law, state media reported.

The law specifically labels as a terrorist organization the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

The United States has already blacklisted dozens of entities and people for affiliations with the Guards, but until Trump’s decision not the organization as a whole.

Comprising an estimated 125,000-strong military with army, navy and air units, the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) also command the Basij, a religious volunteer paramilitary force, and control Iran’s ballistic missile programs. The Guards’ overseas Quds forces have fought Iran’s proxy wars in the region.

The long-tense relations between Tehran and Washington took a turn for the worse last May when Trump pulled out of a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, reached before he took office, and reimposed sanctions.

Revolutionary Guards commanders have repeatedly said that U.S. bases in the Middle East and U.S. aircraft carriers in the Gulf are within range of Iranian missiles.

Rouhani said on Tuesday that Iran will continue to export oil despite U.S. sanctions aimed at reducing the country’s crude shipments to zero.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Peter Graff and Frances Kerry)

No pressure to withdraw from Syria by specific date: U.S. general

FILE PHOTO: General Joseph L. Votel, Commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM) speaks during the Change of Command U.S. Naval Forces Central Command 5th Fleet Combined Maritime Forces ceremony at the U.S. Naval Base in Bahrain, May 6, 2018. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The general overseeing U.S. forces in the Middle East said on Thursday that he was under no pressure to withdraw forces from Syria by any specific date, after President Donald Trump ordered the drawdown of most U.S. troops from Syria.

“What is driving the withdrawal of course is our mission, which is the defeat of ISIS and so that is our principal focus and that is making sure that we protect our forces, that we don’t withdraw in a manner that increases the risk to our forces,” U.S. Army General Joseph Votel, head of the U.S. Central Command, said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

“There is not pressure on me to meet a specific date at this particular time,” Votel said.

Trump had ordered the withdrawal of all 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria in December after he said they had defeated Islamic State militants in Syria. The abrupt decision sparked an outcry from allies and U.S. lawmakers and was a factor in Jim Mattis’ resignation as defense secretary.

But Trump was persuaded by advisers that about 200 U.S. troops would join what is expected to be a total commitment of about 800 to 1,500 troops from European allies to set up and observe a safe zone being negotiated for northeastern Syria.

About 200 other U.S. troops will remain at the U.S. military outpost of Tanf, near the border with Iraq and Jordan.

Thousands of people could still be left inside Islamic State’s last enclave in eastern Syria, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said, as waves of evacuations from the tiny area continued on Thursday.

The SDF has said it wants to ensure all civilians have been evacuated before launching a final assault on the besieged enclave of Baghouz. It is the last shred of populated territory held by Islamic State, which once controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Votel said he believed that Islamic State militants being evacuated from the remaining territory controlled the militant group were largely “unrepentant, unbroken and radicalized.” He said the militant group was waiting “for the right time to resurge.”

“We will need to maintain a vigilant offensive against this now widely dispersed and disaggregated organization that includes leaders, fighters, facilitators, resources and toxic ideology,” Votel added.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish)

U.S. disrupted Russian trolls on day of November election: report

FILE PHOTO: Voters fill out their ballots for the midterm election at a polling place in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S. November 6, 2018. REUTERS/Nick Oxford

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military disrupted the internet access of a Russian troll farm accused of trying to influence American voters on Nov. 6, 2018, the day of the congressional elections, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The U.S. Cyber Command strike targeted the Internet Research Agency in the Russian port city of St. Petersburg, the Post reported, citing unidentified U.S. officials.

The group is a Kremlin-backed outfit whose employees had posed as Americans and spread disinformation online in an attempt to also influence the 2016 election, according to U.S. officials.

“They basically took the IRA (Internet Research Agency) offline,” the Post quoted one person familiar with the matter as saying. “They shut ’em down.”

The Pentagon’s cyber warfare unit, which works closely with the National Security Agency, had no comment on the report. Cyber Command’s offensive operations are highly classified and rarely made public.

The Internet Research Agency was one of three entities and 13 Russian individuals indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in February 2018 in an alleged criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper in the U.S. presidential race in a bid to boost Trump and disadvantage his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

Prosecutors said the agency is controlled by Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, who U.S. officials have said has extensive ties to Russia’s military and political establishment.

Prigozhin, also personally charged by Mueller, has been dubbed “Putin’s cook” by Russian media because his catering business has organized banquets for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Since those indictments, the breadth of the troll farm’s activities has come to light. A report by private experts released to the Senate Intelligence Committee said the Internet Research Agency has tried to manipulate U.S. politics for years and continues to do so today.

The report, by an Oxford University team working with analytical firm Graphika, said Russian trolls urged African-Americans to boycott the 2016 election or to follow wrong voting procedures, while also encouraging right-wing voters to be more confrontational.

Since Donald Trump was elected president, the report said, Russian trolls have put out messages urging Mexican-American and other Hispanic voters to mistrust U.S. institutions.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Mark Hosenball; editing by James Dalgleish and Bernadette Baum)

U.S. cannot back Syrian forces who align with Assad: U.S. commander

FILE PHOTO: A poster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is seen on the main road to the airport in Damascus, Syria April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki/File Photo

By Phil Stewart

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The United States will have to sever its military assistance to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) battling Islamic State if the fighters partner with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or Russia, a senior U.S. general said on Sunday.

The remarks by Army Lieutenant General Paul LaCamera, who is the commander of the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, underscore the tough decisions facing the SDF as the United States prepares to withdraw its troops from Syria.

Syrian Kurdish leaders have sought talks with Assad’s state, hoping to safeguard their autonomous region after the withdrawal of U.S. troops currently backing them.

They fear an attack by neighboring Turkey, which has threatened to crush the Kurdish YPG militia. Ankara sees the Syrian Kurdish fighters as indistinguishable from the Kurdish PKK movement that has waged an insurgency inside Turkey.

But LaCamera warned that U.S. law prohibits cooperation with Russia as well as Assad’s military.

“We will continue to train and arm them as long as they remain our partners,” LaCamera said, praising their hard-won victories against Islamic State militants.

When asked if that support would continue if they aligned themselves with Assad, LaCamera said: “No.” “Once that relationship is severed, because they go back to the regime, which we don’t have a relationship with, (or) the Russians … when that happens then we will no longer be partners with them,” LaCamera told a small group of reporters.

President Donald Trump’s surprise December decision to withdraw all of the more than 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria has triggered deep concern among U.S. allies about the risk of a resurgence of Islamic State.

With U.S.-backing, the SDF has routed Islamic State and is on the verge of recapturing the final bits of its once sprawling territory. But Islamic State still has thousands of fighters, who, now dispersed, are expected to turn to guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks.

On Friday, the four-star U.S. general overseeing U.S. troops throughout the Middle East, General Joseph Votel, told Reuters that he backed supporting the SDF as needed as long as it kept the pressure on Islamic State militants.

But LaCamera’s comments make clear that the SDF may have to choose between backing from Assad, Russia or the United States.

Kurdish forces and Damascus have mostly avoided combat during the war. Assad, who has vowed to recover the entire country, has long opposed Kurdish ambitions for a federal Syria.

Earlier on Sunday, Assad warned the United States would not protect those depending on it, in reference to the Kurdish fighters.

“We say to those groups who are betting on the Americans, the Americans will not protect you,” he said without naming them. “The Americans will put you in their pockets so you can be tools in the barter, and they have started with (it).”

Reuters has reported that Trump’s decision was in part driven by an offer by Turkey to keep the pressure on Islamic State once the United States withdrew.

But current and former U.S. officials warn Ankara would be unable to replicate the SDF’s success across the areas of Syria that the militias captured with U.S. support including arms, airstrikes and advisers.

Brett McGurk, who resigned in December as Trump’s special envoy to the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, warned last month that the SDF could not be replaced as the provider of stability in areas of Syria formerly held by the militant group. He also cautioned that Turkey, a NATO ally, was not a reliable partner in the fight in Syria.

“The Syrian opposition forces (Turkey) backs are marbled with extremists and number too few to constitute an effective challenge to Assad or a plausible alternative to the SDF,” McGurk wrote.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; additional reporting by Ellen Francis in Beirut; editing by David Evans)

Exclusive: U.S. may trim over 1,000 troops from Afghanistan in belt-tightening – general

FILE PHOTO: U.S. troops patrol at an Afghan National Army (ANA) Base in Logar province, Afghanistan August 7, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani/File Photo

By Phil Stewart and Greg Torode

MUSCAT/KABUL (Reuters) – Even before any peace push-related drawdowns, the U.S. military is expected to trim troop levels in Afghanistan as part of an efficiency drive by the new commander, a U.S. general told Reuters on Friday, estimating the cuts may exceed 1,000 forces.

U.S. President Donald Trump told Congress this month he intended to reduce U.S. forces from Afghanistan as negotiators make progress in talks with Taliban insurgents, saying: “Great nations do not fight endless wars.”

U.S. Army General Joseph Votel, the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, said the decision to reduce some of the roughly 14,000 American forces in Afghanistan was not linked to those peace efforts, however.

Instead, he said it was part of an effort by Army General Scott Miller, who took over the more than 17-year war effort in September, to make better use of U.S. resources.

“This is something that he started as he got into the position here and was looking at how we (can) be as efficient and as effective as we can be on the ground,” Votel said in an interview during a trip to Oman.

Miller’s decision represents a reversal of sorts after years in which the U.S. military sought to slow or halt troop drawdowns under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, and previously lobbied for more troops under Trump.

It was unclear how far along any troop reductions might already be. The Pentagon says U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan are at around 14,000 but adds the number can fluctuate.

Other sources offered lower estimates. Diplomatic sources believe the efficiency push, which has been raising eyebrows in Kabul, was already driving down U.S. troop levels.

“We’re watching this very closely,” said a senior Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is clear General Miller’s desire to streamline is already having an impact on numbers.”

Asked whether Miller would likely cut more than 1,000 troops from Afghanistan under the efficiency drive, Votel said: “He probably will.”

Votel added that some troops could be moved “over the horizon,” still remotely supporting the war effort from overseas. That, he said, would also reduce vulnerabilities in America’s longest war.

“This is his decision as commander here – how he most effectively uses the resources that he has and trying to be as efficient as he can be,” Votel said, without offering a specific estimate of exactly how many troops Miller may withdraw.

Miller’s spokesman, Army Colonel Dave Butler, declined to speculate on future troop levels. But Butler said Miller would still have surge capabilities into Afghanistan when needed for specific missions.

Costs have increasingly been a focus of discussions between Kabul and Washington. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani recently sent a letter to Trump offering to reduce U.S. expenses in Afghanistan.

“How to do this more cost effectively is something that we have been working towards for a long time,” Roya Rahmani, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Washington, told Reuters.

ENDLESS WARS

U.S. officials have held several rounds of talks with the Taliban in Qatar since last year in what is widely seen as the most serious bid for peace in the 17-year war. Taliban negotiators will meet their U.S. counterparts on Feb. 18 in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

U.S. officials have told Reuters the military is planning for what a withdrawal of about half of the 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan would look like.

That has raised concerns about whether a smaller force would be able to support the Afghan military and whether other European armies that rely on American helicopters and other support would pull out.

It also raises questions about how big of a U.S. counter-terrorism force might be able to remain in the country.

Votel declined to discuss any internal deliberations, noting he had not received orders for a withdrawal.

Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan offered a similar reassurance this week, telling nervous NATO allies on Thursday that any potential U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan will be done in a coordinated fashion.

Asked about Trump’s concerns about endless wars, Votel said: “We don’t want to fight endless wars either. We want to accomplish the mission here.”

“I think the strategy that the president has allowed to get put in place here, the South Asia strategy, focused on reconciliation, has been a good one,” he said.

Beyond U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Pentagon relies on thousands of private contractors.

A recent report by the U.S. Special Inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction noted there were an additional 861 Defense Department civilians and 10,698 contractors who were U.S. citizens.

Diplomats familiar with NATO operations told Reuters they believed the number of contractors was not expected to be reduced along with U.S. troop withdrawals, and could actually increase.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart in Muscat, Oman and Greg Torode in Kabul; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Military survey finds deep dissatisfaction with family housing on U.S. bases

FILE PHOTO: Swab tests at residences in Fort Benning, Georgia, U.S. reveal in red the presence of lead in this undated handout photo obtained by FOIA from the US Army, received by Reuters August 15, 2018. U.S. Army FOIA/Handout via REUTERS

By M.B. Pell and Joshua Schneyer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A new survey of military families living on U.S. bases found most are dissatisfied with their housing, often citing serious health and safety hazards results that counter years of Pentagon reports claiming soaring satisfaction rates among military housing tenants.

The survey results, collected from nearly 15,000 families currently or recently living in privatized military housing, were released hours before Senate hearings called to probe living conditions on U.S. bases. Wednesday’s hearings were prompted by Reuters reports that found widespread housing hazards and poor safety oversight on bases nationwide.

The survey, conducted by the nonpartisan Military Family Advisory Network, found that just 16 percent of respondents had a positive view of their base housing and 55 percent had a negative one. Many families reported unsafe conditions including lead-based paint, rampant mold, exposed asbestos, faulty electrical wiring, vermin infestations and gas leaks.

The results contradict the overwhelmingly positive metrics of resident satisfaction presented in years of Defense Department reports to Congress, which say that nearly 90 percent of tenants polled would recommend privatized military housing.

The Defense Department reports rely on data collected by the private real estate firms that operate base housing in partnership with military branches. The companies’ compensation is partly determined by the results of resident satisfaction surveys.

“It has become apparent that there is a disconnect between our findings related to resident satisfaction and what has been reported by privatized housing companies,” the nonprofit military group’s report said. “Military families are living in dangerous situations.”

The Department of Defense declined to comment on the survey findings. The military has often credited its privatization program with enhancing living conditions for service families through new construction and renovations. The Defense Department said it is committed to remediating problems.

Around one-third of U.S. military families, some 700,000 people in all, live in privatized housing across more than 100 federal military bases. Whether families choose to live on base or in civilian communities, their rent is covered by DOD housing stipends. The online survey found that many families see little choice but to live in base housing: Rental housing off base can be scarce and costly, and deployments can limit their options.

The survey results will be entered into testimony at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. Among those slated to testify: Defense Department officials and top executives of five major companies who operate base housing in a public-private portfolio of more than 200,000 family homes. Senators will also hear from military families who will share their own stories.

Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force families living in 46 states with privatized military housing responded to the survey, the organization said. The respondents currently live on base or have in the past three years. Some described respiratory ailments and neurological disorders they blamed on poor water quality, sewage backups, water leaks, toxic soil and shoddy construction.

“Our results show a systemic problem that does not discriminate among location, rank, or branch of service,” the report said.

Families said their concerns are sometimes ignored, or that their landlords or command threatened discipline if they continued to complain.

One California spouse whose husband served in the Marines for 20 years said she had to hire her own environmental firm to confirm mold in the house. The report didn’t name her.

Others reported vermin, from black widow spiders to rodents, bats and snakes. “Rats would die in our attic, and they’d only remove them once maggots were falling from the ceiling,” said a survey respondent living in Hawaii.

The Military Family Advisory Network, a support organization that represents service members and their families, said it decided to conduct the survey after hearing from families about housing concerns.

The findings echo a year-long Reuters investigation that found hazards and maintenance lapses in privatized military housing. Service families can be left powerless in disputes with the private landlords who are in business with their military employers. Those landlords, Reuters found, stand to earn billions in fees from 50-year contracts.

(Editing by Ronnie Greene)

Trump says U.S. military intervention in Venezuela ‘an option;’ Russia objects

Venezuelan opposition leader and self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido and his wife Fabiana Rosales gesture during a rally against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government in Caracas, Venezuela February 2, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Brian Ellsworth

CARACAS (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said military intervention in Venezuela was “an option” as Western nations boost pressure on socialist leader Nicolas Maduro to step down, while the troubled OPEC nation’s ally Russia warned against “destructive meddling.”

The United States, Canada, and several Latin American countries have disavowed Maduro over his disputed re-election last year and recognized self-proclaimed President Juan Guaido as the country’s rightful leader.

Trump said U.S. military intervention was under consideration in an interview with CBS aired on Sunday.

“Certainly, it’s something that’s on the – it’s an option,” Trump said, adding that Maduro requested a meeting months ago.

“I’ve turned it down because we’re very far along in the process,” he said in a “Face the Nation” interview. “So, I think the process is playing out.”

The Trump administration last week issued crippling sanctions on Venezuelan state-owned oil firm PDVSA, a key source of revenue for the country, which is experiencing medicine shortages and malnutrition.

Maduro, who has overseen an economic collapse and the exodus of millions of Venezuelans, maintains the backing of Russia, China and Turkey, and the critical support of the military.

Russia, a major creditor to Venezuela in recent years, urged restraint.

“The international community’s goal should be to help (Venezuela), without destructive meddling from beyond its borders,” Alexander Shchetinin, head of the Latin America department at Russia’s Foreign Ministry, told Interfax.

France and Austria said they would recognize Guaido if Maduro did not respond to the European Union’s call for a free and fair presidential election by Sunday night.

“We don’t accept ultimatums from anyone,” Maduro said in a defiant interview with Spanish television channel La Sexta carried out last week and broadcast on Sunday.

“I refuse to call for elections now – there will be elections in 2024. We don’t care what Europe says.”

EMBOLDENED OPPOSITION

The 35-year-old Guaido, head of the country’s National Assembly, has breathed new life into a previously fractured and weary opposition. Tens of thousands of people thronged the streets of various Venezuelan cities on Saturday to protest Maduro’s government.

Guaido allies plan to take a large quantity of food and medicine donated by the United States, multilateral organizations and non-profit groups across the Colombian border into the Venezuelan state of Tachira this week, according to a person directly involved in the effort.

The group has not yet determined which border point it will cross, said the person, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

It is unclear whether Maduro’s government, which denies the country is suffering a humanitarian crisis, will let any foreign aid through.

The embattled president on Sunday promised peace for Venezuela without specifically responding to Trump.

“In Venezuela, there will be peace, and we will guarantee this peace with the civil-military union,” he told state television, in the company of khaki and black-clad soldiers who were earlier shown carrying guns and jumping from helicopters into the sea.

Maduro has overseen several such military drills since Guaido declared himself president to display he has the backing of the military, and that Venezuela’s armed forces are ready to defend the country.

Air Force General Francisco Yanez disavowed Maduro in a video this weekend, calling on members of the military to defect. But there were no signs the armed forces were turning against Maduro.

Venezuela has as many as 2,000 generals, according to unofficial estimates, many of whom do not command troops and whose defection would not necessarily weaken the ruling socialists.

The police have also fallen in line with Maduro.

A special forces unit called FAES led home raids following unrest associated with opposition protests in January, killing as many as 10 people in a single operation in a hillside slum of Caracas.

Venezuela’s ambassador to Iraq, Jonathan Velasco, became the latest official to recognize opposition leader Guaido this weekend.

(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth; Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Writing by Brian Ellsworth and Sarah Marsh; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Peter Cooney)

Increase in sexual assault at U.S. military academies: survey

Military helicopters, conducting a military training exercise, fly past the Statue of Liberty in this photograph taken from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S., March 11, 2017. REUTERS/Ashlee Espinal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Incidents of unwanted sexual contact increased by nearly 50 percent at top U.S. military academies over the past two years, according to a Pentagon survey released on Thursday, highlighting an issue that has long plagued the military.

The study, part of a report released annually, said there had been 747 instances of unwanted sexual contact in 2018, compared to 507 in 2016.

Sexual assault and harassment in the U.S. military is largely under-reported and came under renewed scrutiny two years ago after a scandal involving Marines sharing nude photos of women online came to light.

The survey said that 16.5 percent of female cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2018, compared to 10.2 percent in 2016.

All cadets at West Point as well as a Navy and Air Force academy were given the opportunity to take part in the survey.

In a statement, the Army said it had directed West Point to create a plan in the next few weeks to tackle the issue.

“There is no room in the U.S. Army for sexual harassment or sexual assault,” the statement said.

“This is a readiness issue that affects our ability to prepare to fight and win our Nation’s wars as much as it is an issue of values,” it added.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Alistair Bell)