NATO's DVC INFOPACK March 26, 2008 - USEmbassy.gov · century. NATO has as its mandate Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, the collective defense of the members of the North Atlantic Treaty

NATO SUMMIT Bucharest, Romania

April 2-4, 2008

Information compiled by

The Information Resource Center Embassy of the United States of America

March 26th 2008

Information Resource Center, Embassy of the United States of America Madrid, Spain

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Introduction. 5

1. Kurt Volker’s Biography. 7

2. NATO 2008: A Preview of The Bucharest Nato Summit. By Kurt Volker, Kurt Volker, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs. February 29, 2008

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3. NATO 2008: Is the Alliance Ready to Face New Challenges? Expectations from Bucharest. Kurt Volker, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs. March 20, 2008

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4. Strengthening Europe’s Role in Global Security. February 25, 2008. Ambassador Victoria Nuland, U.S. Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). February 25, 2008.

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5. Selected Web Sites.

31

6. Annex 1: ISAF progress after five years of operation in Afghanistan. U.S. Mission to NATO

7. Annex 2: Fighting the Opium Trade in Afghanistan: Myths, Facts, and Sound Policy . U.S. Department of State and U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office. March 11, 2008


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Introduction

The Information Resource Center (IRC) of the Embassy of the United States in Madrid has prepared this information packet for the Digital Video Conference on the NATO Summit organized by the American Embassy in Madrid with State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Kurt Volker, on March 26, 2008.


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1. Kurt Volker. United States State Department, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.

Kurt Volker assumed his duties as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs in July 2005. As second-in-command of the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, Mr. Volker is focused on working with Europe as a whole to address the common challenges our nations face, based on our shared values of freedom, through instruments such as NATO, U.S.-European Union relations, the OSCE, and our numerous bilateral relationships. He also oversees strategic planning, congressional relations, and post management for the Bureau.

Mr. Volker, a career member of the U.S. Foreign Service, previously served as Acting Senior Director for European and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC). He served at the NSC for four years, where as Director for NATO and West Europe, he was responsible for transatlantic relations, NATO policy, and bilateral relations with the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and seven other countries. He helped work to reinvigorate U.S. outreach to Europe following the November 2004 U.S. elections. During his time at the NSC, Mr. Volker was responsible for U.S. preparations for the 2004 NATO Istanbul Summit and 2002 Prague Summit, including launching NATO operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, strengthening NATO defense capabilities, bringing in seven new members, and strengthening NATO-Russia relations.

Until July 2001, Mr. Volker was Deputy Director of the Private Office of then-NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson. Within the Secretary General’s office, Mr. Volker took primary responsibility for Balkans peacekeeping, defense and nuclear planning, and NATO force and command structure issues.

Prior to working for the Secretary General, Mr. Volker was First Secretary at the U.S. Mission to NATO, responsible for the Membership Action Plan and Partnership for Peace issues.

From 1997-1998, Mr. Volker worked on foreign policy matters for U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ).

From 1994-1997, Mr. Volker was the Deputy Political Counselor and Political-Military Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, Hungary. He played the lead role in negotiating the establishment of U.S. military bases in Hungary to support the IFOR and SFOR missions in Bosnia, as well as a bilateral status of forces agreement.

He has also served in London and the State Department in various positions, including Special Assistant to the Counselor and Special Assistant to the U.S. Special Envoy for Bosnia negotiations. Before joining the Foreign Service in 1988, Mr. Volker served for two years as an analyst at the CIA.

Mr. Volker has a B.A. from Temple University and an M.A. in international relations from George Washington University. He has studied in Sweden and France and speaks Hungarian, Swedish and French. He is married and has two daughters.

Source: U.S. State Department , http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/or/50139.htm


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2. NATO 2008: A Preview of The Bucharest Nato Summit by Kurt Volker

Key Themes for the Bucharest Summit

• AFGHANISTAN

• NATO ENLARGEMENT

• NATO, KOSOVO AND SECURITY

• MISSILE DEFENSE IN EUROPE

• NATO AND RUSSIA

February 29, 2008

The [United States] and Europe as a transatlantic community really do form a single democratic community anchored on shared values of democracy, market economy, rule of law, human rights. We are the pillars of this in the world. We need to work together because we see the same challenge in the world, whether it is in violent extremism that is attacking societies in the form of terrorism, whether it is security threats, crises, such as in Darfur or recently supporting [former U.N. Secretary-General] Kofi Annan’s efforts in Kenya.

Whether it is Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon with UNIFIL, Israeli-Palestinian issues. We see the world in much the same way. We are affected by it in the same ways by the challenges. We need to deal with these challenges together.

We are doing far better at this now than we were in 2003-2004. I think that was a low point in our efforts to work together as a transatlantic community, but if you look around now I think that on each one of these issues that I mentioned and many more, you can identify how the U.S. and Europe are putting our heads together, what the framework of our cooperation is, where the common positions lie.

Of course there will always be some differences, there will always be some tactical differences, but I feel that we are very much on the same page and working very well together. That’s something we’ve worked very hard at to recover from after 2003 and 2004.

That means not only working with coalitions, but I should add working with institutions like the European Union, like working within NATO.

For this to succeed in the future I think we have two things that are required. We need a continuing commitment from the United States to work together as part of a larger democratic family of nations and a larger community trying to solve problems together. We need to sustain that U.S. commitment, which we are pushing now and I’m confident will continue. We also need European allies and partners to contribute substantially to solving the problems that we’re dealing with together. It’s a resource and a capacity question as much as a political question. Maybe the parts to focus on are the political engagement, in addition to the resource contributions that the [United States] makes and the capacity engagement in addition to the political contributions that Europe makes.

Another thing that I think is worth keeping in mind is the context of thinking about security in the 21st century. NATO has as its mandate Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, the collective defense of the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That is an important, valid fact for the future as well. Just because the Cold War is over and just because we don’t have this military standoff with what used to be the Soviet Union or with Russia today, that doesn’t mean that security challenges have gone away. It just means they’ve changed. In many ways they’re more complicated. And the well being that European societies enjoy today, the well being the United States enjoys today, continues to depend upon our

Source: U. S. State Department: http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-english/2008/March/20080307110347eaifas0.1626551.html


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ability to provide security for our people. That requires conscious investment in security in order to make that happen.

Here’s where I think we have some work to do among many other things within NATO, is tying the sense of well being that we do enjoy to the continuing need to invest in security as we deal with the challenges that we face.

Related to that, during the Cold War it was true and everyone knew it, that European and United States security were linked. That you couldn’t really have long term security in one or the other, you had to have it in both. That was a lesson from World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and post Cold War with the wars in the Balkans and it remains true today. Even in the face of very different kinds of threats and challenges, that U.S. and European security remains linked, and so we have to approach it that way.

What are some of these changes that NATO has to react to? So an old organization, 60th Anniversary is next year, with an old mission, providing for the collective defense of its members, but in a very different environment. The threats are different. We talk about terrorism, we talk about proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, we talk about missile defense, we talk about failed states, regional crises, think about Afghanistan.

The geography of this is different. The geography during the Cold War was well known. The geography today of the challenges that NATO has to face is kind of unlimited. Threats and challenges can emerge from anywhere to affect the countries of Europe and the United States and Canada, and so we need to deal with these challenges without geographic limit. This is the old out of area debate that took place in the late ‘90s and early 2000’s as NATO was deliberating what about Bosnia, what about Kosovo, what is out of area.

In May of 2002 at the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Reykjavik, NATO essentially decided there is no such thing as out of area any more because the nature of the challenges change.

I think there is a divergence in perceptions in many ways between the [United States] and Europe over some of these challenges, but I firmly believe that we are one community and we are affected by these challenges in much the same ways, and therefore it’s imperative that we do stick together.

And the capacity investments. Just to throw out a couple of numbers, I think the U.S. defense budget is about 4 percent of GDP [gross domestic product]. I think the average of NATO nations minus the U.S. is about 1.3 or 1.4 percent of GDP. So there’s a discrepancy in the way our societies are approaching defense investment and I think that’s something we’ll have to address in the future.

So with these changes that have taken place in the threat environment, and the well being that European societies enjoy today, the well being the United States enjoys today, continues to depend upon our ability to provide security for our people. That requires conscious investment in security in order to make that happen.

NATO has not been standing still. When we think about the summit coming up in Bucharest we need to think back to the summits that we’ve already had in Riga and Istanbul and Prague and Madrid. That NATO has been adapting to a new security environment for some time.

In 1995, before the summer, NATO had 16 members, had no partners, we had no such thing as Partnership for Peace. No partners, 16 members, and had never conducted a military operation. A lot of defense planning, a lot of exercises, but that was NATO.

In 2006, NATO had 26 members, had 20 partners in Eurasia, had seven in North Africa, the Mediterranean Dialogue, four in the Persian Gulf, and was conducting six operations simultaneously in Afghanistan, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, Active Endeavor which is counter-terrorism naval operations in the Mediterranean, we were transporting African Union troops through airlift to Darfur and delivering humanitarian relief after the earthquake in Pakistan. So you had a NATO that had fundamentally changed from what it was doing in 1995. Operationally engaged, geographically diverse, working with partners.

You can learn a few things from just those facts as well, too, so that a NATO that is doing all those sorts of things has much different requirements than a NATO from 1995. It has to have forces and capabilities that are able to deploy, sustain themselves at some distance, cover a wide range of missions from airlift to peacekeeping to humanitarian relief to combat operations in Afghanistan, to naval operations. So a big variety of what NATO needs to be able to do. And part of this also is recognizing that it’s not just military. That there is a spectrum of civil/military cooperation and engagement that is necessary to succeed in these challenges.

Afghanistan, again, is a perfect example to illustrate this. Security and development go hand in hand. You can have successful military operations, but if you don’t have the development and the civilian


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efforts behind that, it won’t be sustainable. On the other hand, you can’t even get your civilian and development operations off the ground if you haven’t established security. So, we are mutually dependent on these things and we need to see them as a whole as NATO takes on these roles in the future and needs to work with other institutions such as the EU, the U.N., others on the ground in Afghanistan to be successful.

So there’s been a great deal of reworking and rethinking of NATO already. That’s what brings me now to the Bucharest Summit because the goal of the summit is to take where we’ve gone so far and advance them further, in each of these areas.

If you had to figure out what are the headline issues that are going to be addressed at Bucharest I think they would be Afghanistan, enlargement -- and that is both invitations and possible Membership Action Plan, missile defense, I think we’ll have to stay focused on Kosovo, and some of these capabilities issues of strengthening NATO capabilities.

Let me take a moment to go through each of those as agenda issues for the summit, then have a few other closing comments.

AFGHANISTAN

On Afghanistan, Afghanistan as I said is a prime example of the role that NATO needs to play and needs to play successfully in the security environment that we now have. Essentially the well being of our societies, the security of our societies, depends upon what we do in Afghanistan. Remember, that it was from the territory of Afghanistan that the plot to attack the Twin Towers in New York was hatched, and it was a complex one because it was hatched there, but then we had cells in Germany and we had people who then arrived in the United States and acted within the United States to carry out an attack. So there is a failed state or a state taken over by terrorists dimension to security in Afghanistan. But there are other dimensions.

Afghanistan is by far the single largest source of opium reaching Europe and having an affect on lives of young people in Europe every day, and putting costs on societies in Europe that need to deal with problems of drug addiction and the associated problems that come with drug addiction such as health issues and crime issues.

You have a phenomenon of violent extremism. I mentioned this earlier. Where it is currently a serious matter for us to think about as democratic societies that you have violent extremists out in the world who deliberately use violence to attack societies, to attack civilians, and that they are finding a climate where there’s a war of ideas going on. There’s a debate over whether moderate societies rise up and prevent this sort of thing from happening, moderate people within society, or whether some of this is justified. I think it’s essential for the United States, for Europe, for those who believe in civilization to say no. Deliberate violence and attacks against civilians that include women, that include children, that include the elderly, that are indiscriminate, really. You think about the principal number of victims of violent extremist attacks have been Muslims by other Muslims in Iraq or in Afghanistan or elsewhere. These are terrible things. So this is a long term challenge for us.

We need to help the majority of the people in Afghanistan, the vast majority, who want to build a society, who want our help to do so, who have formed a government through a free and fair election, who have a constitution based on the meeting of a loya jurga, who are establishing governance really for the first time since before the Soviet invasion. This is a major challenge that is important for us because of the global stakes. The second point is it’s also important for the people of Afghanistan. Because without the help we can give them it’s going to be very, very difficult. They face determined, armed extremists who are trying to retake the country and they depend on our assistance to prevent that from happening.

I think we’ve made a lot of progress in Afghanistan. If you look at measures like access to health care, 8 percent of the population in 2001, over 65 percent today. Education, 900,000 kids in school in 2001, over five million today. Girls, zero in school in 2001 because it was illegal, over a million and a half today. Infrastructure, 50 kilometers of paved roads in 2001, over 4,000 kilometers today. There are a lot of measures of progress and development that we’ve made in Afghanistan.

But the fact is that the challenges remain very, very grave and greater than our collective efforts to deal with them at the moment. We need to be doing more and better, and we need to change some of our approaches.


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I think we’ve learned a lot about counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and I think we’ve seen some progress in the eastern part of the country, and I think we need to continue to rework our NATO strategy on counter-insurgency to make sure we can increase our effectiveness throughout the whole country.

I should add that NATO will not only be meeting by itself, but we’ve invited President [Hamid] Karzai, the United Nations, European Union, to host a larger meeting in Bucharest where the global community that is engaged in Afghanistan will be able to meet and discuss how we proceed on these critical issues.

NATO ENLARGEMENT

The second theme that I mentioned was enlargement. This is an area that I think has been a tremendous historic success for NATO. We now have over 100 million people from the Baltics to the Black Sea who live in free, democratic societies, market economies that are prospering, and are secure as members of NATO and integrated as members of the European Union with a Europe that’s whole and free. That’s a tremendous achievement. NATO enlargement was the vanguard on this. It’s not the only thing. EU enlargement was critical as well. But NATO enlargement pushed ahead and that made a tremendous difference for the countries and the people of Central and Eastern Europe.

It also made NATO better. I know this was a debate in 1997-1998 when we had the ratification debates, would this weaken NATO to bring in countries that are not as rich and not as developed and whose military forces are not as strong as the old countries from NATO of 1996. It was a debate, it was an honest question, but I feel confident now saying that NATO is better. NATO is stronger as a result of having countries like Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, in as members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. They bring capacity, they bring political will, they bring a commitment to the same values and principles that NATO has always believed in, and I think that NATO is more outward looking, more engaged operationally, and more relevant to the future today as a result of that enlargement that took place in 1997 and in 2002.

So we look ahead and we see that the job of building a Europe whole, free and at peace is not finished. We have the Balkans, we have Ukraine, we have Georgia, we have Belarus - a dictatorship, and we say that we need to be continuing to build and strengthen strong societies in Europe.

Here we’ve used a tool, the Membership Action Plan, to help countries such as Albania, Croatia and Macedonia to strengthen their political, economic, military reforms, build interoperability, take part in operations together such as in Afghanistan where all three are participating, in order to build their capacities and their ability to function effectively as members of NATO.

The idea behind the Membership Action Plan, it was created at the Washington Summit in 1999, was well, we’re not ready to issue an invitation to these countries today but we don’t want to just fold our hands and say no, so we wanted to reach out and help. The Membership Action Plan was NATO’s vehicle to assist countries to say we want to see you succeed, so let us figure out ways that we can help you do so, so that later on we will be able to take a positive decision on membership that we can’t take today. That was the genesis of it and I think it’s worked very well.

It’s a consensus organization, NATO. It takes a decision by all 26 members to agree to invite any additional member. I’m very confident that there will be new invitations in Bucharest. We would like to see as many countries succeed as possible. We are working hard to help bring that about, but it is a decision that is yet to be taken in this country, exactly which countries will we support. That is a decision that only the president can make, and it’s a decision for the alliance as a whole, say will we support three or two or one, or what will the decision be on further enlargement.

We have two other countries that have expressed interest in NATO membership and they’ve written to the secretary-general and said we’d like to take part in the Membership Action Plan, and that’s Ukraine and Georgia.

The position of principle. Whether or not you have a decision at Bucharest in favor of Membership Action Plan or not, the decision or the position has to be we need to be able to support people and support countries that want to build strong, democratic, secure societies and work together to build security in the neighborhood and in the world. So we very much believe that NATO needs to give a positive signal like that.


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NATO, KOSOVO AND SECURITY

I mentioned Kosovo. I won’t dwell on Kosovo today but I just want to emphasize that NATO has a particular job in Kosovo which is to run the KFOR [Kosovo Security Force] operation, to maintain security in Kosovo, to maintain freedom of movement, and to protect minority communities and religious establishments within Kosovo. That is what KFOR is there for. It’s working very hard to do that. I think 90 percent or more than 80 percent of the troops in Kosovo are European. The [United States] is only 1700 troops. But KFOR, a NATO operation, has a very important job in Kosovo at a time that we are seeing Kosovo establish its independence. And NATO is committed to seeing that through and accomplishing its mission.

MISSILE DEFENSE IN EUROPE

Missile defense, I know there’s been a great deal of debate on this within Europe. I would look at it this way. Article 5 of the NATO Treaty basically says that NATO is supposed to protect its territory and its populations against threats. We have a collective defense commitment. It doesn’t say that we’ll protect ourselves from everything except missiles. It says we ought to do this. And as missile threats emerge that can hit alliance territory and population centers, imagine the effect of a missile hitting a European city. It would be devastating.

So to have a defensive system that can take a missile out of the sky so that that kind of devastation can’t happen, that is a remarkable step forward technologically, but it’s also a remarkable step forward politically because it means that NATO is doing its job of collective defense.

We’re talking about a very limited number of interceptors. We’re talking about interceptors that don’t have their own warheads. It’s a kinetic effect to take out the incoming missile. But it is an important contribution, I think, to NATO security overall.

Other issues, I want to mention a couple. One of them is as we’ve developed forces that are able to deploy and sustain themselves at a distance, we’ve also come across some critical gaps of what we don’t have enough of. One of them was airlift, strategic airlift, where it’s very expensive and not enough countries were able to transport themselves to and from the theater of operations, so we launched an initiative for the Riga Summit back in 2006 to get a consortium of countries together in which the United States took part to buy some C-17 aircraft so that we would have an ability to provide airlift.

That is still underway. It sounds modest, three or four airplanes. But they’re very expensive and it’s more than one country can do alone. So by pooling resources we create a physical capacity of airlift that can then support NATO operations or support EU led operations or support the needs of a nation that’s engaged in some operation somewhere, based on having shared the cost and now owning a share of the hours of transportation of that aircraft.

Other gaps have emerged as well and we need to chip away at filling these gaps. Helicopters are probably one of the most important ones at the moment that we would identify. The ability to have tactical airlift within a theater of operations such as Afghanistan where the helicopters have the necessary protective measures, where they’re able to transport troops throughout the entire country, and where we have the deployed maintenance and logistics teams able to keep the helicopters flying. Very expensive, very difficult, we don’t have enough of the maintenance and logistics and we don’t have enough helicopters overall as an alliance, so we need a further investment in that. That’s something that the alliance is starting to work on and that we think we’ll make some progress on at Bucharest.

Another one I wanted to mention is special operations forces. Until operations began in Afghanistan, NATO had not really tried to coordinate among the special operations forces of the allies. We’ve begun to do so and we find it very, very productive and very rewarding, so we’ve created a cell in Europe, SHAPE, where special operations forces coordinate with each other and we are working to do so on the ground as well, so that those who are deployed in Afghanistan are working together.

The final one on capabilities, although there are many others that I could mention, is just the NATO Response Force. The NATO Response Force was created as a result of a decision at the Prague Summit in 2002 to give NATO a deployable capability that was ready and known and exercised. Before that everything was a tin cup operation. Everything was you had a crisis, you had to go to the nations and see what countries could volunteer that wasn’t otherwise being used. It made it very difficult for NATO to


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know what was available and what could really be done on short notice. The Response Force was created to give NATO that capacity.

It was made large. It was defined as a force about 25,000 with a full spectrum of capabilities -- land, sea, air, communications, [and] transportation. What happened then is NATO became more heavily involved in operations today, operations that are ongoing. Not planning for the contingency but carrying out the one that’s real. Sustaining the real operations as well as sustaining a Response Forces exercise became very challenging just in terms of sheer numbers of troops and sheer equipment investment and the tying up of forces that could otherwise be deployed in operations today.

So we’ve looked at how we can rethink the Response Force. I think the simplest explanation is to say we need deployable pieces. You have to be able to have pieces of a response force that can deploy rather than the whole thing all at once, and a varying of the readiness timelines so that not everything has to be equally highly ready all the time, but can stretch out over time. This is a way then for the nations that are contributing the forces to manage the costs of that.

NATO AND RUSSIA

A few words in closing. One of them is Russia. I see my friend here from the Russian embassy, so I want to reiterate and I’m glad that he’s here to hear it, we want to work together with Russia. We believe that NATO and Russia share a great deal of common security interests and we ought to be able to deal with these together.

The NATO-Russia Council was founded in 2002 at a NATO-Russia summit meeting. I believe that we’ve never fully explored the potential of a NATO-Russia Council, and that we should.

We’d like to work together on missile defense. Missiles can hit not only NATO territory, but Russian territory as well. We’d like to work together on security in the Balkans. I think that depends upon an independent Kosovo and a KFOR operation that’s maintaining security there. But we have to look ahead.

We would like to work together on the future of the CFE Treaty [Conventional Forces-Europe] and we are disappointed that Russia has chosen to suspend implementation of the CFE Treaty, but we also want to work together to overcome that suspension so that we can get to a point where we are implementing not only the current treaty but also to a point where we will be able to ratify the adapted CFE Treaty and continue to see that as an important measure of conventional forces security and stability in Europe, and in many other areas as well.

Another one that I wanted to mention was NATO-EU relations because we believe it’s very important that NATO and the EU are able to work together. We’re often in the same space trying to contribute to the same solutions, whether it’s Kosovo or Bosnia or Afghanistan or Darfur. NATO has a comparative advantage on the military side but needs to have some liaison and capacity to span into the civilian spectrum. And the EU has a comparative advantage on the civilian side but is also developing military capacities, particularly for operations where NATO is not going to be involved, and we see that in Chad, for example. So we like to see NATO and EU be able to work together more seamlessly as institutions across a civil/military spectrum to deal with crisis management in places where we need it.

So we hope that we’ll be able to see progress in that over time. But we should be clear that the U.S. position at least is that we want to see NATO and the EU work well together and we support a European security and defense policy that can be coordinated with NATO and that can draw upon European capabilities to do things where NATO is not engaged.

A final point, with all of that having been said about the past developments of NATO, the context that we’re working in, and then what we’re looking for at the Bucharest Summit. In the end, it all boils down to political will. That we have to want this.


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3. NATO 2008: Is the Alliance Ready to Face New Challenges? Expectations from Bucharest.

Kurt Volker, Acting Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs His Excellency Adrian Vierita, Ambassador to the United States from Romania Remarks at National Press Club Newsmaker Program Washington, DC March 20, 2008

Mr. Hickman, NPC: -- Those Newsmakers, as you know, are the recently arrived Ambassador of Romania to the United States, His Excellency Adrian Vierita. He presented his credentials to President Bush in January. Mr. Ambassador. And the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Mr. Kurt Volker, who has been nominated by President Bush to be the next U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Congratulations, Mr. Secretary.

Ambassador, Mr. Secretary, welcome to you both. We’re very glad you could be here with us, and I want to welcome back to the NPC and thank the person who suggested and did most of the work in arranging this Newsmaker, the Press and Cultural Affairs Officer of the Romanian Embassy in Washington, Ms. Ilinca Ilie who is sitting somewhere modestly around here.

Copies of our newsmaker’s bios are available so I won’t take up their time by telling you what you can already read, but let me just mention a couple of the higher highlights.

Ambassador Vierita is a career diplomat. He was Romania’s Ambassador to Germany. He also served at the Office of International Organizations in Vienna, and was his country’s deputy representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency and UNITO. And Mr. Ambassador, I’ve forgotten what UNITO stands for. United Nations, what is it?

Ambassador Vierita: United Nations Organization for Industrial --

Mr. Hickman: Industrial. And prior to his present posting, Ambassador Vierita was State Secretary for European Affairs in the Romanian Foreign Ministry.

Secretary Volker also is a career diplomat. He’s been posted in Budapest, London, NATO headquarters, and the U.S. Senate -- is that considered a foreign assignment? [Laughter]. Where he worked on foreign policy with Senator John McCain. His experience has been largely in U.S. security policy, transatlantic relations, and NATO policy which certainly should stand him in good stead with his new job.

As you all know, Romania is hosting the 2008 Summit Meeting of NATO heads of state and government in Bucharest April 2nd to the 4th. This is the largest summit in NATO history with all members plus the members -- 26 members, plus 23 members of the Partnership for Peace attending. At the summit I understand that President Bush is scheduled to meet with Romanian President Traian Basescu, Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, and NATO Secretary General and Summit Chairman, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. I read that Russian President Putin is going to attend the meeting, and something NATO has said it hopes will, and I quote, “yield practical results.” Let’s hope it does.

So today our Newsmakers are going to preview this largest NATO Summit to date, whether the organization is ready to face new challenges, and what might be expected from the Summit. After they speak, they will take your questions, and please let them know your name and affiliation when you ask them, and to whom your question is directed. And when you do have a question if you’ll give me a signal

Source: U. S. State Department: http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/102489.htm


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of some sort I’ll call on you in turn, as many of you as time permits. Finally, if you haven’t already done so, as you leave please add your name to the sign-in sheet outside. Thank you very much.

Secretary Volker, do you want to go first?

Acting Assistant Secretary Volker: Thank you very much. I think I’ll speak, and then Adrian, and then we’ll do questions at the end of that. Thanks very much.

I have been speaking a little bit about the NATO Summit in various venues now so I recognize some of you from other events. So I apologize if I’m being repetitive, but I do think it’s important that we take some time to discuss what we see are the major issues involving NATO right now, what we hope to be accomplishing at the Summit.

The first thing I would want to call your attention to is that NATO has been undergoing a substantial transformation since the end of the Cold War, since the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the ‘90s and since September 11, 2001. There has been a tremendous transformation that has taken place.

Let me give you just an illustration of how that transformation has gone. In 1995, not that long ago, 13 years ago, NATO was an alliance of 16 countries. It had no partners, had not established a Partnership for Peace yet. Had never conducted a military operation. Had of course done a lot of defense planning, had conducted a lot of exercises, but had never engaged in a military operation where NATO was leading that.

Fast forward that to 2006, 2007, 2008. Here you have a NATO that is now 26 members, having enlarged, brought in ten new members in a couple of waves of enlargement; having partners through the Partnership for Peace in Eurasia; partners in the Mediterranean through the Mediterranean Dialogue, seven of them; 20 in Eurasia; four in the Persian Gulf through the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative; working with other global partners such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, in common endeavors such as the operations in Afghanistan. And NATO, which had never conducted a military operation for most of its history, by 2006 and beyond was conducting multiple operations simultaneously. To name a few of them, obviously running the ISAF operation in Afghanistan, also KFOR in Kosovo, having a presence in Bosnia still, Active Endeavor which is a NATO counter-terrorism operation in the Mediterranean, delivering humanitarian relief supplies after the earthquake in Pakistan or after Hurricane Katrina here in the United States, or transporting African Union soldiers to Darfur, so NATO’s role has transformed considerably.

The way I would explain this is that NATO’s mission, NATO’s purpose, the collective defense of its members, Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, remains unchanged. That is still the fundamental mission of NATO. The way it has to go about that mission in today’s world is very different. The world today is characterized by threats that are very different than those that prevailed during the Cold War and immediately after. So we see things such as counter-terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, failed states, extremism, and NATO’s response to this is therefore very diverse. If you look at the operations that I mentioned, there’s a great diversity in the ways in which NATO was handling these challenges, whether it is humanitarian, delivery of humanitarian relief, airlift, standard traditional peacekeeping operations, or very high intensity operations in combat such as in Afghanistan. So a great diversity of tasks that NATO has taken on for the same purposes of the security and defense of its members under the Washington treaty.

So this has been a substantial transformation that has taken place already since ’95, since 2001, but there is more to come as well. I would characterize the Bucharest Summit as a further milestone in the continuing transformation and evolution of NATO, touching on these very same areas that I’ve already mentioned.

To give you some examples, we do expect there to be further invitations to countries to join NATO at the Bucharest Summit. There are three countries -- our Ambassador of Macedonia has just arrived. Welcome. There are three countries in the Membership Action Plan right now -- Albania, Croatia and Macedonia -- who are seeking NATO membership. We hope to have the largest possible number of that group invited to join NATO at the Summit itself.


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We have been working very closely with all of these countries and they’ve been working very hard on their political, economic defense reforms. So we’d like to see the strongest candidacies possible from these countries and they’ve been working hard at it, and we’d like to see the widest possible enlargement agreed by NATO. So that is one of the issues.

Another is Afghanistan, I mentioned this already, but NATO will be having a meeting that is not just NATO but NATO working with a lot of different partners who are all contributing to the efforts in Afghanistan. President Karzai will be there, the European Union will be there, United Nations including the new Special Representative of the Secretary General Kai Edie, other institutions, other partners and contributors in Afghanistan. I understand the Australian Prime Minister is planning to be there. So this is an opportunity for NATO to mobilize and be a host for a larger international community to focus on our efforts in Afghanistan.

NATO will be articulating a comprehensive approach, a vision for how we need to proceed in Afghanistan, supporting the Afghan government and working with them. Military areas, of course, because we face a very difficult insurgency, and I expect we’ll see some announcements of new contributions. But also in civilian areas such as reconstruction, development, governance and supporting the Afghan government, and also in counter-narcotics and other ways.

Again, Bucharest furthering the transformation of NATO. I mentioned the enlargement issues, I mentioned Afghanistan. There are countries who have sought to be part of NATO’s Membership Action Plan. That’s Ukraine and Georgia. That will be discussed at the Summit itself. We certainly support their aspirations of drawing closer to NATO. It’s something we have long supported. They have made official requests now to the Secretary General. These decisions are made by consensus within NATO, and we’re in the process of consulting with our allies about those issues right now.

Kosovo I should mention. Concerning Kosovo we face contention in the Balkan region right now as a result of Kosovo’s declaration of independence, and that being recognized by a large number of European countries, the United States and others. And NATO has a particular job in Kosovo which is to maintain peace and stability in Kosovo, maintain freedom of movement, protect minorities in Kosovo, protect related institutions, and NATO is fully prepared and capable of doing that job and will make clear at the Summit that it intends to continue to do that.

Finally I should mention missile defense is another area where we believe that NATO will be taking some substantial steps forward.

When I talked about transformation of NATO, it is facing different threats and challenges in a new era with the purpose still on collective defense. Here’s an example where we do see an increase in missile threats that can reach the territory of NATO members, and it’s perfectly appropriate for NATO to recognize that these threats are growing and to welcome the contribution of the U.S. and others toward a missile defense system that can protect alliance territories and population, and to task further work, what more should NATO be doing to look at alliance territory in the face of growing missile threats in the future. So I think NATO taking some steps forward on the issue of missile defense will also be part of what comes out of the Summit.

Those are the principle issues there. I can answer questions about those and about others that may come up, but let me turn to my Romanian colleague who I know has some things he wants to say about the preparations for the Summit as well, and then we’ll take your questions. Thank you.

Ambassador Vierita: Thank you very much. Good morning. And allow me first of all to thank you for coming today here to listen to us. Thank you very much, Peter, for organizing this event, and thank you Kurt, for breaking the ice.

Allow me to tell you that the NATO Summit is something which for Romania is extremely important. It’s not because only the fact that Romania is a supporter of sound transatlantic relationship and NATO. NATO is for us a very important organization. But also because we are facing after almost 60 years, Romania was not completely witnessing 60 years, but the last four of the alliance, and we think that we have to make a very important decision for the alliance, for the organization.


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For us in Romania, this is the biggest event ever organized by Romania, but I think that it’s also the biggest event when it comes to the size of the Summit.

We are expecting, I think 24 heads of state have confirmed their participation. So far 26 heads of government and 87 personalities having the rank of Ministers.

I’d like to refer briefly to address three issues here -- organizational, public diplomacy and substance, and deliverables for the Summit.

Organizational, we are really well, and we are working according to the scheme. There is a huge mobilization of security and law enforcement forces and expensive preparations to provide for a proper level of convenience and comfort for a large number of delegates. We are expecting more than 3,000 delegates and 3,500 journalists to come. I’d like to kindly draw your attention on the second media advisory on the NATO Summit, which is placed outside. The first one was issued in January, but this second one is probably more important.

Public diplomacy and substance. Allow me to say that there are a number of events designed to enhance the public profile of the Summit and to raise the awareness of the public opinion. We have in Bucharest the almost traditional, I would say, German Marshal Fund Conference on the transatlantic relationship, and we will have the U.S. Atlantic Council, Young Atlanticist Forum, which has a modern approach involving internet events with the purpose to project the Summit among the younger generation.

Other events in Bucharest, the CSIS Conference on Central European Security. We are expecting U.S. and European officials, analysts, business leaders, to attend.

Political agenda. As Kurt said, there is high expectation from this Summit and allow me to tell you some topics which are of importance for Romania. Enlargement process. I would dare to say that this Summit is developing under the I would say auspices of the Figure 3. So it is -- The Summit lasts three days. We expect three new members to be invited. And it is actually the third Summit after Madrid, Prague, where the alliance invited new member states.

Again, when we talk about partnership, again I think I could speak about three levels. First is the upgrading NATO’s relationship with three new partners in the Western Balkans -- Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro have already expressed interest to participate, to develop an intensified dialogue with NATO. I also think that the alliance could give a strong signal to Serbia regarding the readiness of the alliance to cooperate to Serbia when Serbia is ready to do it.

Second, the invitation of Georgia and Ukraine to the Membership Action Plan.

Thirdly, consolidation of the Euro-Atlantic partnership that continues to represent strategic importance for NATO.

Missile defense is also very important for Romania based on the principles of solidarity and the indivisibility of security among allies. We would like to see a NATO MD system complementary to the U.S. one, and I think this could also be something that the allies may wish to debate, also to convene in Bucharest.

Last, but not least, Peter, you mentioned the visit of the President of the United States to Romania. We are attaching great importance to this visit and we hope to have a very successful event in Bucharest. Thank you.

Question: Michelle Kelleman with National Public Radio. I wondered about the Russia’s participation and whether Putin’s going to and whether or not it’s going to caste a shadow over the MAP aspirations of Russia, I mean of Georgia and Ukraine. And also, Mr. Volker if you could comment on what level of troops commitments on Afghanistan you are hoping for.


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Ambassador Vierita: There is the intention of President Putin to come to Bucharest. I think this could be a very good signal for NATO, a very good signal for Romania and for Russia. I cannot tell you precisely right now how certain this participation is. We still have some time, some more days.

Acting Assistant Secretary Volker: On the question of President Putin’s participation, I would add a couple of thoughts to what Adrian has said. First off, NATO has invited President Putin to each of the Summit meetings that we’ve had over the last several years. This is the first time which the Russians have indicated a possibility that he may come.

Certainly we want to work together with Russia. We believe that since the end of the Cold War, we have a lot of issues in common concerning security, and we ought to be able to work together. For example, just the area of missile defense where the missile threats that we’re concerned about can equally affect Russia, and we should be able to find ways to work together and cooperate. This was part of the discussions that Secretary Rice and Secretary Gates had in Moscow earlier this week.

Secondly, as it comes to Ukraine and Georgia, this is a decision for NATO itself to make. NATO should be looking at countries who are sharing their desire to strengthen their democratic institutions, their market economies, to become part of a wider transatlantic community and make its own decisions on the merits of those decisions. That is what we expect NATO will do.

Concerning Afghanistan, it’s not for me to announce what other countries hope to announce later on, but my understanding in working with this is first off, the scale of the requirements. This is something that is established by the Combined Joint Statement of Requirements that the military commanders work up on a continuing basis about what’s needed in Afghanistan. They’ve made clear that what we need is additional maneuver forces, a maneuver battalion, helicopters, trainers for the Afghan military and trainers for the Afghan police, to give some concrete examples. And I do expect that at the NATO Summit there will be countries coming forward to make contributions in these areas, whether it is maneuver forces or trainers for the military and police, so I do expect some substantial contributions.

Question: Julian Josephson, Bootstrap Press and a blog called [inaudible]. Nations and their militaries, the center line is energy. What do you foresee NATO doing to try to A, diversify its source of energy from those sources where NATO is not wished very well? And B, to come up hopefully to a Manhattan type project for new sources that perhaps diversify away from petroleum and at the same time are sustainable.

Acting Assistant Secretary Volker: I’ll take that on first, and then maybe Adrian has additional comments.

The first instance, NATO is many things. NATO is a political alliance. It’s a place where we engage in consultations with our allies about issues of strategic significance, and clearly energy is one of those issues where we should be consulting with each other.

Second, NATO is a military alliance so it’s an area where we can instrumentalize particular approaches.

When you look at the questions of energy security and the geostrategic dimensions of energy security, there are certain things where NATO as an institution can play a contributing role beyond the consultation and dialogue that goes on, but in more operational ways. Such as protection of line to supply, protection of ceilings, protection of pipelines, critical infrastructure. These are areas that NATO is discussing, what is the best way for NATO to look at and address these kinds of issues.

Other things that are part of your question are areas that really NATO does not have the lead on. These are things that are national energy ministries, private energy companies, European Union, so other actors who need to look at the day-to-day commercial issues related to the consumption and production of energy.

For example, if you want to diversify sources of supply or create alternative routes of supply with other pipelines. Those are going to be commercial deals negotiated with companies and where the energy ministries and the prime ministries of individual companies will be engaged. The European Union has a


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policy supporting a diversification of energy supply and transparency in markets, and that scenario where that’s being addressed.

So NATO has some particular roles both in consultation and then in some of the security areas, but others are going to be tackled day by day by others who are dealing with them.

A final point, to again take it out of the NATO context, the U.S. has been engaging very intensively with these various countries -- Southeastern Europe and the Caucasus with the European Union to talk about diversification of sources of supply, routes of supply, types of energy. We’ve used our process at the US-EU Summit to build common projects, so-called lighthouse projects beginning with the German presidency where we are working to develop alternative sources of energy together. So there’s a great deal that we are doing in many formats, and NATO is one of those for particular reasons, but it’s a much wider question.

Ambassador Vierita: Kurt, you gave such a comprehensive answer, I couldn’t agree more. Maybe one small point to add. If I’m not wrong, at Riga the Summit decided to address the issue of the energy security, and, of course, we’d like to see it developed in Bucharest along the lines that Kurt presented here. Coming to the diversification of resources, I’d like to mention that Romania is a strong supporter of the Nabucco project which is also supported by our partners, also by the United States but also by our partners in the European Union, so Nabucco, I would say, is a European project, which will not be necessarily tackled during the Summit. It’s not necessarily a NATO issue, but nevertheless, a problem of diversification of sources is there. I think that we need to address it.

Question: James Morrison, Washington Times. My question concerns Macedonia. How do you bring Macedonia into the alliance while keep Greece satisfied?

Acting Assistant Secretary Volker: That’s what diplomacy is all about. [Laughter].

Let me explain the issue that you're raising that we have a dispute between Greece and Macedonia over the name used by Macedonia as a country. The Republic of Macedonia’s position, and the Ambassador can correct me if I misstate it, is that they are the Republic of Macedonia, it’s their constitutional name, and they would like to use that. The position of Greece is that that is not an acceptable name from a Greek position because of Greece’s historical identity as, Macedonia’s historical Greek identity and the territory some of which remains inside present-day Greece. So they would hope that Macedonia would change its name and have something else that it would use in all cases.

These are mutually exclusive positions they can’t both hold at the same time, so what we hope is that some solution will be found with both parties working through the UN process and through the UN negotiator, Matthew Nimetz, to arrive at some compromise whereby they are addressing the issue of the name in a way that they can both live with and avoid that issue becoming an obstacle to a NATO invitation.

Right now, Greece has said that unless this issue is resolved it would not support a NATO invitation. That is something that Greece can do. NATO takes decisions by consensus; Greece is an ally; it has the ability to block such a decision. But rather than looking at the negative, what we are hoping to encourage both sides to do is to work together and work through the UN process to find a way forward, so that this does not become an obstacle to an invitation.

The U.S. is playing an active role in trying to facilitate this effort, and I think it was announced yesterday that the two sides, they met on Monday under the auspices of Matthew Nimetz, the UN negotiator. They’re scheduled to meet again in New York. We are trying to facilitate a meeting directly between senior officials of both sides tomorrow in Brussels with the aim of helping them find a formula that can take them forward. So that’s what we’re trying to do. We hope this is a successful effort, that they’re able to find that kind of solution.

Question: Desmond Butler with the AP. On the missile defense question, do you expect a specific proposal at the Summit about building new infrastructure in Europe [inaudible]?


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Ambassador Vierita: You mean Romania having precise expectations, or --

Question: The question was really directed to both of you. Do either of you expect there to be announcements at the Summit?

Ambassador Vierita: Yes, we would like to see actually a continuation of what we have started a couple of years ago on a NATO missile defense system which would allow countries and territories in the alliance to be fully covered by the system and we’d like to see some progress on this issue, a system which is complementary and could be integrated with the American one.

Question: What would you consider progress?

Ambassador Vierita: This is a very good question. I would personally, I would consider progress if we could agree to task NATO to continue dealing with this.

Acting Assistant Secretary Volker: Let me just pick up on that point. I think that is the stage at which we will be at Bucharest, in fact. I think we will be recognizing that missile threats do exist and are growing, that the U.S. system that we are working with a few allies is a contribution to the protection of alliance territories and populations, and that NATO should do further work on the protection of alliance territory.

So to your first question, specific decisions about programs, I do not expect anything additional. What I do expect is, as the Ambassador said, a decision to task the North Atlantic Council with further work in developing further options.

Question: [Inaudible] Serbian Embassy. Ambassador, I would highly appreciate your comments regarding Serbia that you made in your statement. Just a brief question. Mr. Volker mentioned that [inaudible]. If you can comment a little bit more on the last event in North Mitrovica and the [inaudible] NATO and Partners for Peace that will in fact be [inaudible] European Union task force or new mission. And of course if the Ambassador [inaudible] as well, [inaudible] the Romanian position regarding the unilateral declaration of independence.

Acting Assistant Secretary Volker: Thank you very much. As I mentioned, NATO’s job is to run the KFOR mission, to maintain peace and stability within Kosovo, to assure freedom of movement, and to protect minorities and religions sites. That has been NATO’s job for a long time under 1244 and that continues.

I’m very dismayed at the violence that took place in North Mitrovica a few days ago. These were well organized and well armed protests. There were grenades fired against UN personnel, against KFOR personnel. There were weapons, AK-47s and rifles, fired against UN personnel and against KFOR personnel.

The international community, both the UN and KFOR I think acted with the utmost restraint. There were several injuries suffered by the UN and KFOR. A Ukrainian civilian police official died, very regrettable, from wounds suffered at the time. So it was very dismaying to see that level of violence.

We would urge calm, restraint, non-violence for all parties in Kosovo, and we would encourage the Serbian government, we would encourage all international partners to be urging the same thing, to see non-violence and to see an establishment of a calm civil order which the UNMIK police and which KFOR are responsible for overseeing.

Question: Regarding the European Union mission [inaudible]?

Acting Assistant Secretary Volker: Yes. There is always a delicate moment in NATO Summits when the issue of the EU comes up because the EU is sensitive about making its own decisions about what the EU does and is that something that’s discussed at NATO.

But the fact is that we support the EU mission. We intend to contribute to the EU mission, as the United States. We believe it’s important that these missions be well coordinated between NATO, between the


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EU, and the international civilian representative, and in the transition from the UNMIK presence that is currently there. So I do expect that this will be discussed to some degree as to how the coordination and the transition is going on and with full support from NATO for working together with the EU and Kosovo.

Question: [Inaudible] with Strat Council. I have a question about the new directorate that has been proposed by former NATO commanders and journalists.

Acting Assistant Secretary Volker: Oh, I know what you're talking about. There is a group of five former NATO generals -- Koss, Nauman, Leudin, a few others -- who prepared a study. And in this study one of the recommendations they made was that the U.S., NATO and the EU form some kind of international directorate for providing political oversight to the transatlantic alliance, transatlantic community. And I gather you’re seeking a reaction to that particular proposal.

Question: Yes.

Acting Assistant Secretary Volker: I have to say I find that an interesting proposal but not necessarily a very workable proposal. I think nations that are members of NATO take pride and attach importance to the fact that they are represented at the table. They join in taking decisions by consensus. Particularly when you’re talking about security issues, where you’re talking about the commitment of troops, the risking of lives, the commitment of national treasure, that this is something that nations feel very vested in. So to have a directorate over top of this somehow that is providing a direction to that I think would take away from the basic principle of consensus within NATO at the political level. So that’s one area that’s important.

Another is the practicality of how this works. When you pause to think about it, many countries that are members of NATO are also members of the European Union, and then there are some who aren’t. And who is representing whom in a discussion like that? The institutions themselves are still functions of who the members are, so I’m not sure that that proposal is actually, can be worked in a very practical way.

If I could add one more point to this, I think what the generals are getting at was finding ways to strengthen the coordination among the institutions -- NATO and the EU -- and to strengthen the political cohesion of a transatlantic community in tackling common challenges. Those ambitions, those objectives of better coordination among institutions, stronger political cohesion, those we firmly support and are areas that we hope to work on even if this particular proposal I think has some questions around it.

Ambassador Vierita: I fully agree with Mr. Secretary. I also think that the proposal might be useful and anyhow a source of inspiration. The issue of cooperation between NATO and the EU is an issue that we should probably address. It has also not a long but I would say an intensive story after 2001 when we decided together to cooperate based on some mechanisms, plus, and we within that we have actually two tasks ahead of us and we hope to, actually I’m convinced that at the end of the day the cooperation between the two will be successful in both cases that I mentioned -- Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Question: Jeri Guthrie-Corn, Department of State. I was going to ask about Mitrovica, but instead I’ll follow up on that. After the unfortunate violence a few days ago, there have been some disturbing reports in the press about a potential partition of Kosovo which I think would be destabilizing at least. I’d like to know about that question of partition. And also what Romania might be doing to dissuade the Serbian government from pursuing such [inaudible].

Ambassador Vierita: You know that we have tried to discuss with the authorities in Belgrade. I can recall the visit of President Tadic one month and a half ago in Bucharest, no actually, I’m sorry, the visit of my President in Belgrade one month and a half ago and the recent visit three weeks ago I think of President Tadic in Bucharest. We have encouraged the Serbian authorities not to mislead themselves and to work with the partners, with the United States, with the European Union and also given the fact that in Kosovo is a substantial Serb minority, we have also encouraged the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina.

Now is probably, is a more difficult situation in Belgrade given the fact that they will have election. Again, we are there to assist them, and I think this should also be discussed in Bucharest. We know that President Tadic was invited to come to the Summit. We’ll see.


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Acting Assistant Secretary Volker: I’ll just add two thoughts to that. One of them, to be clear, and thank you, Jeri, for the question, we oppose the partition of Kosovo. We think that would be further destabilizing and leading to a potential for further violence and it is UNMIK’s and KFOR’s and others’ jobs to ensure freedom of movement and functioning of all of Kosovo.

And taking the opportunity of your question to recall that what we are doing with Kosovo is seeing the implementation of the UN plan, Ahtasarri’s plan that was developed for the most stable, secure way forward which has a heavy emphasis, I would add, on the identification and protection of minority rights and the rights of religious communities within Kosovo. That is a big part of what the international community’s mission is, within Kosovo now, is to make sure that as Kosovo establishes itself as an independent state that it does so on the basis of democratic norms and the protection of minorities and minority rights.

Question: ITAR-TASS, Dmitri Kirsanov. Mr. Secretary, I was wondering if you will be discussing in Bucharest any new initiatives aimed at the narcotics problem.

Acting Assistant Secretary Volker: Narcotics is a critical issue for Afghanistan and is in the first instance the responsibility of the Afghan government and our efforts are to support the efforts of the Afghan government. The military forces, ISAF, have a responsibility for security within Afghanistan. We’d like to see closer coordination of the military and the counter-narcotics effort. And as NATO produces or as ISAF produces I think we’ll be calling these strategic vision statements, something like that, about operations in Afghanistan, I think that one aspect is that we do want to see a strengthened counter-narcotics effort that is well coordinated with the efforts at military security.

I don’t expect that NATO itself will be announcing or taking new decisions on counter-narcotics efforts that it would undertake, but insofar as the forces that are there aiming to provide security in key provinces, are working more closely together with the Afghan government, with other donors who are involved in counter-narcotics efforts, we hope to be able to facilitate a turn-around in the direction of narcotics production.

I would just point out that in the eastern part of Afghanistan we’ve seen some success in this with a closer coordination of efforts against the insurgency and reduction of narcotics production and closer work with the Afghan authorities, and we hope to see similar progress in the south of Afghanistan.

Question: Another for the Ambassador. Years ago Romania had rather large energy resources, the oil field of [inaudible] which I understand were laid out during World War II [inaudible]. But does not Romania still have alternative sources working for that also could directly help the NATO effort? Isn’t there some shale and other such resources?

Ambassador Vierita: Yes, you’re right. We still have our own resources when it comes to oil and gas. We also developed a national strategy on energy as part of a broader European effort, and we are also within the European Union advocating the idea of having a European energy policy. Alternative sources are important, and I think that we could be optimistic when it comes to the target set, according to, maybe you can recall the Lisbon Strategy which deals with reduction of carbon emissions and improving, developing new sources of alternative energy.

Acting Assistant Secretary Volker: Thank you very much for coming.

Ambassador Vierita: Thank you.


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4. U.S. Supports Albania, Croatia, Macedonia for NATO Membership. NATO expansion enhances regional security, stability, prosperity

By Merle D. Kellerhals Jr. Staff Writer

Washington -- NATO enlargement has been a major success not only in enhancing the trans-Atlantic security alliance, but also in promoting democratic institutions and challenging corrupt practices that inhibit economic development, says a senior U.S. diplomat. He says that these successes would be enhanced by bringing Albania, Croatia and Macedonia into the alliance at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania.

At a recent congressional hearing, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried indicated that the three nations have provided military forces to serve with other NATO-led units in Afghanistan, Kosovo and other global peacekeeping operations. "In short, they have shown a clear commitment to bearing the responsibilities of NATO membership."

But joining NATO is not simply a means to expand the alliance and share military responsibilities. NATO expansion serves a broader role in helping the alliance meet new responsibilities, Fried said.

EXPANSION ENHANCES SECURITY AND PROSPERITY

Philip Gordon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and an expert on NATO and the trans-Atlantic alliance, says the expansion that began in the early 1990s has contributed significantly to security and prosperity in Europe. "The incentive of NATO membership has led aspiring countries to reform their political systems, liberalize their economies, root out corruption, resolve territorial disputes with neighbors, rationalize their military establishments, and improve minority rights," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee March 11.

New members have provided support and troops for security and peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and in Afghanistan, and have sent troops to join the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, he said. "In turn, NATO membership has reassured their populations of political and military solidarity with the United States and members of the European Union, enabling them to focus on improving the well-being of their citizens rather than worrying about the types of military threats they had lived with for centuries."

Within that context, Gordon said, "I support entry into NATO of the current candidates -- Albania, Croatia and the Republic of Macedonia." Each nation has been part of NATO's Membership Action Plan (MAP) process for six years or more, Gordon said, and has made significant progress in reforming political systems, economies and military establishments.

A significant aspect of the three nations' efforts to meet NATO membership is that they have strengthened civilian control of the military and respect for minority rights, he said.

"None is yet a model democracy -- but all are moving in the right direction and have made at least as much progress as those that have preceded them in the accession process. Their accession after years of preparation will also demonstrate the sincerity of NATO's pledge that membership genuinely is open to those European democracies that meet its stringent criteria," Gordon said.

Albania has made steady progress in combating corruption, including the arrests of senior governmental officials and others, substantial progress on judicial reform and progress on laws to increase openness and efficiency in the court system, Fried testified. "In addition to the strong support and leadership on Kosovo, Albania is the largest per-capita contributor to NATO and coalition operations in Afghanistan and Iraq," he told the panel.

Croatia has made significant progress toward political and economic maturity, and is also a strong partner on the battlefield, he said. Macedonia has made significant strides since 2001 in building a multiethnic democracy.

Source: Department of State: http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/75477.htm


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GEORGIA AND UKRAINE

Gordon said NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine is more controversial because of significant opposition from Russia. In addition, both countries have experienced some degree of political instability in recent years that suggests more progress must be made before membership can be considered.

"NATO enlargement is not and has never been a threat to Russia, which should understand that it can benefit from democracy, stability, and prosperity in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus," Gordon said.

While the United States always has supported the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine, "they are not ready to be NATO members now, as they themselves recognize," Fried said. "We can help them to help themselves, as they are asking, just as we have helped others, through the Membership Action Plan. MAP is the next step for them, and the timing of that step will be a key issue for the Bucharest Summit."

Fried said that "no amount of outside pressure or intimidation should sway allies from doing what is in NATO's best interests."

Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina joined NATO's Partnerships for Peace in November 2006, and have expressed interest in beginning talks about membership in NATO, "and we believe that NATO should extend those offers at Bucharest," Fried said. However, Gordon said being offered a Membership Action Plan does not guarantee membership immediately or ever. All membership decisions, ultimately, will be taken within NATO by consensus and on a case-by-case basis, he said.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden said the prospect of membership encouraged Europe's newly liberated countries to settle long-standing disputes, “to deep root democracy and human rights” and to build competent militaries.

"During the 1990s, NATO became a force for the promotion of a Europe whole and free in ways its founders, I don't think, ever fully imagined," Biden said. "It remains my conviction that we should extend an offer of NATO membership to any country that applies and meets the criteria."

As a strategic matter, Biden said, the admission of Albania, Croatia and Macedonia to NATO would bring the Balkans closer to the European future its people deserve while strengthening regional security.

Senator Richard Lugar, the senior Republican on committee, said that expansion of NATO serves two critical purposes for future security.

"[Albania, Croatia and Macedonia] occupy critical geostrategic locations and are best situated to deter any efforts by any party to destabilize the Balkans through violence. These three candidate countries also have proven their commitment to making meaningful contributions to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan," Lugar said.


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5. Strengthening Europe’s Role in Global Security. Ambassador Victoria Nuland, U.S. Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). February 25, 2008.

NATO has already done a lot to transform for new missions. Not only are we keeping peace in Kosovo and supporting security and stability with our Afghan partners in the Hindu Kush, we are training the Iraqi military in Baghdad, supporting the AU’s Darfur mission with airlift and training, developing counter-terror technologies, missile defense capability, cyber security and other 21st century capabilities while deepening our partnerships with forty countries across 4 continents -- from Casablanca to Canberra. And at our next summit in Bucharest, we will invite new members into the Alliance, proving once again that NATO, like the EU, is one of the most powerful magnates and mentors for democratic change in history. With that little unpaid advertisement for NATO, let me now follow with something you may find completely counterintuitive – especially from me; as tomorrow’s diplomats, journalists, parliamentarians, international lawyers and business people, I hope you will consider it your first responsibility in addition to building the strongest possible Britain and NATO, to strengthen and build the capacities of the European Union. You will think this is strange, a little suspicious -- to have the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, standing here, urging you – the British and international leaders of the future to build a stronger EU. So why am I doing it? If we have learned anything since September 11, 2001 – or for that matter over the past 60 or 100 years – it is that the U.S. and the UK not only need each other, we need a strong Europe. We, in the United States, need a Europe that is as united as possible, ready and willing to bear its full measure of responsibility for defending our common security and advancing our shared values. And Brits and all Europeans, need an America that is engaged, consulting and cooperating with Europe—finding common solutions to common challenges. Just as our transatlantic unity in the 20th century ensured the defeat of fascism and Soviet Communism, in the 21st century we must also share the risk and share the responsibility for protecting and advancing the freedom we enjoy. Today the challenges we face together run the gamut from terror, violent extremism and weapons of mass destruction to the need to decrease our dependence on carbon fuels and address the poverty, disease and hunger that still afflict too much of the world's population. Together, we must manage a Kremlin that has tightened its grip on state power, suspended the conventional forces in Europe treaty and threatened to target missiles at its neighbors, even as we work together with Russia on Iran, North Korea and other vital shared interests. We must maintain the right mix of diplomacy and offers of political and economic engagement plus pressure on Iran to come back into compliance with the UNSC, abandon terror and give its people the future they deserve. And we must encourage China to use its growing power for stability and peace, in its neighborhood and globally. In short, we are living in a complex and dangerous world -- one that requires those of us who are blessed to live in free societies to join forces to protect what we have at home and to secure and enlarge the democratic community. As we in the United States look across the globe for partners in meeting these challenges we of course look to our Asian Allies and other strong democracies to our South and to our East. But one of our first stops is often at the European Union. We will always consult early with London and other member state capitals but increasingly we are also turning to European institutions as well. With 15 missions now on three continents, the EU has proven its ability to deliver a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts. Today’s EU brings development aid, human rights standards, anti-corruption programs, police trainers, election monitors, cadre building skills and most importantly, the capacity to put all these things together in the right combination to meet the challenges of the moment. Britain has been a leader in building these capacities in the EU, and they are paying off -- witness the EU's combined civil-military mission in Bosnia, the civpol missions in East Timor and in Rafah, and peacekeeping efforts in Chad. We commend the EU's leadership on all of these issues. But just as the EU’s capacity for common action on the soft power side has gone up, our collective transatlantic commitment on the hard power side, has objectively gone down.

Source: U.S. Mission to NATO: http://nato.usmission.gov/ambassador/2008/Amb_Nuland_022508.htm


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If in 1980, the transatlantic average for national defense spending was 3 percent of gdp, today it is 1.7 percent. And when you subtract the 4 percent American taxpayers now contribute our trans-Atlantic average is closer to 1.4%, despite the fact that Britain continues to punch well above its weight spending 2.32 percent of GDP on defense. Why has transatlantic security investment dropped? You know the answer. Because after the Cold War, we all took a peace dividend. And also because throughout the 90's it was fashionable in salons in Europe and even some in the US to believe that soft power was the only appropriate answer. That hard power was dangerous, that it drew enemies, and using it was the mistake of overly militaristic societies. And yet, in Chad, those EU nations that participate are discovering that even to conduct a relatively modest peace support operation, you need desert capable helicopters, long range transport aircraft, you need sophisticated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets and modern interoperable communications equipment. All the development aid in the world, all the governance support and police training in the world does no good if you can’t first provide security for the people you aspire to help. And my home organization, NATO, is learning the same lessons in Afghanistan. So I am here in London today to say that the United States needs, the U.K. needs, NATO needs, the democratic world needs a stronger, more capable European defense capacity. An ESDP with only soft power is not enough. It will take concerted U.K. leadership within the EU to get European defense spending growing again and to focus ESDP on the right things like upgrading European military capabilities with badly needed investment in helicopters, UAVs, special forces, interoperable communications and counterinsurgency trained soldiers and civilians. This is an interest we share because U.S. and U.K. soldiers and civilians cannot continue to bear so much of the global load without more help from more of our Allies and friends. And also because we know that if Europeans will invest in their own defense, they will also be stronger and more capable when we deploy together. Which takes me back to Afghanistan, one of my favorite subjects these days– the greatest operational challenge our Alliance has ever undertaken in its 59 year history. First, the good news: the NATO Alliance that never fired a shot in the Cold War had some real operational successes last year with our Afghan partners. Despite the dire headlines, the Taliban’s much vaunted Spring Offensive never materialized. Roads, schools, markets and businesses have been built all over the country. Six million Afghan children now go to school, one third of them girls. Over 80% of Afghans have access to health care. And as President Karzai told the NAC last week, most Afghan people now live less than five kilometers from a clinic today. Districts and villages throughout eastern and southern Afghanistan -- in Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Nuristan and Konar; in the Sangin valley and Musa Qala in Helmand; and in the area south of Kandahar -- are more secure and more accessible than they have been in years -- in some cases, decades. The ranks of trained Afghan soldiers have swelled from 35,000 to almost 60,000, with Afghans themselves leading the fighting in some important combat operations. This spring, the United States will send an additional 3,200 Marines to capitalize on the gains, and support the Afghans, and support the momentum -- 2,200 for ISAF combat missions in the south and 1,000 more trainers for Operation Enduring Freedom, focused primarily on Afghanistan's police forces in the South and West. At the same time we have got to be honest. The intense challenge of this mission for Afghans and for NATO allies has become clear. Insurgents are resorting to the deadly terrorist tactics of improvised explosive devices, suicide bombing, kidnapping and targeted assassination; they kill teachers in front of their students, parliamentarians in their districts and kill foreigners in hotels in the center of Kabul. In the mountains and caves along the Afghan-Pakistan border, they plot and train for the next attacks on our cities. In areas where security is weak, the Taliban and their drug-lord enablers have pushed more prime land into poppy production. Crime and corruption are on the rise, and the Afghan people grow more impatient every day to see action and justice from their elected leaders. Meanwhile, we as an international community have struggled to coordinate our efforts. And just as Iraq forced adaptation in American and UK military and development tactics and strategy, the Afghan mission is forcing changes in NATO. With each passing month, allies learn more about what it takes to wage a 21st-century counterinsurgency -- a combined civil-military effort that puts warriors side by side with development workers, diplomats and police trainers. Whether flying helicopters across the desert at night, embedding trainers with the Afghans, conducting tribal councils with village elders or running joint civilian-military Provincial Reconstruction Teams, most of us are reinventing the way we provide security. As Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said, this requires new training, new equipment, a new doctrine and new flexibility in combining civil and military efforts in a truly comprehensive approach to security.


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As we surge soldiers to the south of Afghanistan this spring, we must also ensure our civil efforts are keeping pace. It is not enough to talk about knitting up civil and military efforts: we need to ensure we have joint action on the ground and the requisite resources. This is why President Bush asked Congress for over $10 billion in development and governance support and counter narcotics efforts for Afghanistan last year – to ensure that as we liberate communities, we work with Afghan leaders to bring a better quality of life with new roads, schools, power, water and employment options other than poppy. But in too much of Afghanistan – and particularly in the South – as a TransAtlantic community, we are underinvested in promoting good governance, rule of law, counter narcotics and anti-corruption programs. With these challenges in mind, we very much welcome Prime Minister Brown’s enduring commitment to Afghanistan, and his December 12 announcement that in the 2009-2012 period, Britain will commit an additional £ 450 million to development and stabilization assistance in Afghanistan, on top of the £ 490 million you have already spent in the past six years. I have seen the effect of this investment, and the hard work of your nearly 8 thousand troops on the ground in Helmand. In April 2007, we landed in Sangin 5 days after its liberation from the Taliban by Afghan, British, United States, Danish and Estonian troops. Our guys were still sleeping rough on floor of the "Taliban Hilton", a former hospital riddled with bullet holes which the enemy had used as its base, and they took us to the UK outpost where just a week earlier young men from your nation spent months fending off rocket and grenade attacks from just a few yards away. One of the most poignant moments was to see the names of the British fallen etched into the mud walls of the fort – brave young people of just 19, 20, 25. And five months later, Stewart and I were back. This time, the streets and market of Sangin were alive with families and kids, and we visited a newly refurbished school where classes would soon resume. Today, a similar story is unfolding in Musa Qala. And Britain is again thinking about reinforcing its contingent of combatants and trainers in Helmand to solidify the gains. But too much of burden – particularly in the South -- is still born by the nations who have committed the most forces there. While the EU’s 200-plus train-the-trainer police mission is very welcome and playing an important role at the national and provincial level, we estimate Afghanistan is going to need at least 3000 embedded police mentors to begin to turn the tide and create Afghan confidence in the effectiveness and trustworthiness of their local police. What could be more vital to winning hearts and minds of Afghans 18 months before the next election cycle in Afghanistan than creating confidence in the security of their communities? As a Mom myself, I would say what Afghan mother, what Afghan father will side with democratic change if they aren’t sure their kids will be safe tomorrow? As we like to say in Brussels, there can be no development without security and no security without development. The question is whether we are practicing what we preach as well as we should. Which takes me back to my more fundamental point: we need a stronger EU, we need a stronger NATO and if Afghanistan has taught us anything, we need a stronger, more seamless relationship between them. I would go further: if we truly believe in a transatlantic comprehensive approach to security – one that combines the best of our soft and hard power – we need a place where we can plan and train for such missions as a NATO-EU family. O.K. don't get scared, I am not talking about combining institutions or even melding their mandates. That wouldn’t make sense for Europe or for North America. Europe needs a place where it can act independently, and we need a Europe that is able and willing to do so in defense of our common interests and values. But we cannot keep showing up side by side in far flung parts of the world and playing a pick up game. Coalitions of the Willing have their limitations. We have to learn to think, to train and to act together, while preserving the autonomy of each institution. This is not simply about Afghanistan and Kosovo, where NATO and the EU are both involved now; it is about effective joint action wherever we may be called to support security and development – from the Palestinian territories, to Africa, to future challenges that we can only imagine today. If we can do it as a TransAtlantic community, we as core members of the UN family will also strengthen that organization’s efforts. And the good news is that the stars might actually be coming into alignment for this kind of coherence. In Paris, we have a president who is prepared to use his EU presidency to strengthen Europe’s defense contribution and then bring France back into a renovated NATO. In Washington, leaders of all stripes are calling for more, not less Europe. And in London, David Miliband is calling on us to support the global “civilian surge” for democracy with both soft and hard power.


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So the old prejudices and callouses are fading on both shores of the Atlantic. Now we must show equal wisdom in breaking down barriers within the organizations. On the EU side, a partner like Turkey which contributes generously to EU missions and wants to cooperate with the European Defense Agency should be welcome, should be consulted and offered a security agreement and rights commensurate with its contribution and potential. In response, NATO should open the doors of partnership fully to Cyprus and finalize its security agreement, while also encouraging Malta to come back to the Partnership for Peace. Long-standing members of both the EU and NATO like the UK, France and Germany hold the keys to this kind of grand bargain. The U.S. stands ready to help, but Europeans must take the lead in melting the glaciers of the senseless "frozen conflict" between the two organizations. With 21 of our members sitting in both the EU and NATO now, with renewed understanding on both sides of the Atlantic that we need each other, it only makes sense that we finally get this fixed. And as we’ve learned the hard way, history has not ended. If we care about democracy and peace, we have to be stronger than those who oppose them. And we have to be willing to make the investment of blood and treasure to maintain "a global balance of power that favors freedom", as my boss, Condi Rice likes to say. This is going to take courage, it is going to take creativity and it is going to take vision. It is also going to take considerably more investment from all of us. My generation is prepared to start this work of reshaping one of history’s greatest partnerships – the TransAtlantic union – to meet this latest challenge to our security and our liberty. Your generation will have to finish it. Thank you for joining me here today and I look forward to our discussion.


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5. Selected Web Sites.

o U. S. Mission to NATO: Bucharest Summit http://nato.usmission.gov/

The U. S. Mission works everyday with the 18 North American and European allies to ensure joint security through political and military cooperation. It also promotes Euro-Atlantic stability with the NATO Partnership for Peace program, the Strategic Partnership with Ukraine and through a continuing security dialogue with Russia.

o America.gov Page on the United States and NATO http://fpolicy.america.gov/fpolicy/security/nato.html

America.gov delivers information about current U.S. foreign policy and about American life and culture. This site is produced and maintained by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Information Programs.

o NATO Site on Bucharest http://www.summitbucharest.ro/

This is the official NATO web site on the Bucharest Summit.


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The Information Resource Center

Embassy of the United States of America

http://www.embusa.es/irc

March 26th, 2008

NATO's DVC INFOPACK March 26, 2008 - USEmbassy.gov · century. NATO has as its mandate Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, the collective defense of the members of the North Atlantic Treaty

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