NATO chief: new strategy should not undermine pledge to defend European borders

by Paul Ames

NATO's new strategic concept must maintain the commitment to defend Europe's borders as the bedrock of the alliance even as it seeks to develop greater reach to deal with far-flung crises and threats, the bloc's top diplomat said on Thursday.

"NATO's core task was, is and will remain the defense of our territory and our populations," said alliance Secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen. "For our alliance to endure, all members must feel that they are safe and secure."

Speaking ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Slovak capital, Fogh Rasmussen sought to re-assure Poland, the Baltic states and other alliance members in eastern Europe that the reform of NATO's strategic concept planned for next year won't undermine the allies' commitment or ability to defend them.

Some allies have expressed concern that the wider international role of NATO, highlighted by the operation in Afghanistan, risks eroding the guarantee enshrined in the alliance's founding treaty that an attack on one member will be an attack on all. Those concerns have mounted since the brief war between Russia and Georgia in August last year.

Many in eastern Europe want NATO to step up planning for territorial defense and to ensure that forces and infrastructure are in place in case there is a conventional attack on their territory.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander R. Vershbow insisted there was no contradiction between developing expeditionary forces and the continued engagement to defend NATO borders in Europe.

"A new Strategic Concept will need to help the alliance to strike the right balance among old and new missions," Vershbow told a conference of defense experts ahead of the ministers' talks." Keeping pace with changes of the past decade will mean committing the resources needed to develop flexible, deployable forces that can be sent into action around the periphery of the Alliance as well as at a strategic distance."

Despite the commitment to the core role of the alliance developed during the Cold War, Vershbow and Fogh Rasmussen stressed that NATO was ready to develop a close partnership with Russia.

Relations have been strained by the Georgia war, disputes over Russian energy supplies to Europe and the Bush administration's plans to install anti-missile defenses in eastern Europe.

U.S. President Barrack Obama's recent decision to revise those plans has opened the way for a warming of ties between Moscow and NATO.

"We need a new beginning in NATO-Russian relations," said Fogh Rasmussen, who plans to travel to Moscow in the next few weeks to discuss a "joint review of the 21st-century security challenges."

Vershbow said the United States was "enthusiastic" about developing a "potential cooperative role" for Russia in Washington's new missile defense plans. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was due to brief the allied ministers in Bratislava on the revised American plans.

Vershbow said Washington wanted other NATO countries to participate in the missile shield which could involve installing interceptor missiles in Europe, including Poland, but of a type deemed less threatening by Russia. The United States has always maintained that the missile shield is aimed at a potential threat from Iran, not Russia.

The current U.S. plan would involve a first phase designed to protect Turkey and other NATO allies in southeastern Europe from the threat of a short-range missile strike from the Middle East and is due to be in place within the next few years, said Vershbow.

Defenses against longer-range missiles should be developed with bases in southern and eastern Europe by 2015.

"At the end of the day we will provide protection for all of NATO Europe," Vershbow said.

On Wednesday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said his country would be willing to host elements of the scaled down U.S. missile defense plan. However, his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico told NATO that anti-missile units would not be placed in his country.

Source: Xinhua