Brussels, 06/04/2001 (Agence Europe) - EU country defence ministers, meeting for an informal session in Brussels on Friday, chaired by Swedish Minister Bjorn von Sydow, agreed to focus the second conference on "military capabilities" for crisis management, which is scheduled for November, on shortcomings in capabilities. Between now and then, work of defining an assessment mechanism of actually available capabilities, according to the parameters defined at the Summit of Nice, must be accelerated, the High Representative for Cfsp, Javier Solana, remarked to the press. In that context, the Council President regretted the fact that Turkey was still blocking an agreement between the EU and NATO on the use of NATO planning capabilities. "We have no intention of setting up a planning system as complex as NATO's" declared Mr. von Sydow. "I am optimistic over the possibility of using these planning capabilities. The contrary would be a nuisance", he went on. For now, the "key-word is transparency" of procedures between the EU and NATO, while "respecting respective decision-making autonomy" and avoiding dual usage, he remarked. Bjorn von Sydow hoped that the joint meeting of 15 May, between EU defence ministers and those of the six non-EU European members of NATO (Turkey, Norway, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Iceland) would allow them to move forward on this issue. German Minister Rudolf Scharping hoped that a solution would be found by the end of the year.
One year after the first evaluation conference in which the Ember states announced their military commitments, the next conference should focus on improving the effectiveness of troop capabilities currently available and on strategic ansd material capabilities: intelligence, command, communication, air transport, protection force. "We need real commitments to fill the gaps in this field", Javier Solana stipulated. French minister Alain Richard remarked here before the press that a "significant sign" of the desire of the Member States to move forward, would be that those countries (Fr., Sp., D, UK, B, Lux., Port., Turkey) that had committed themselves to buying the future large carrier Airbus A 400 M actually signed the contracts. "We are working with the industry to sign these contracts before the end of the year", he stipulated. He pointed out that London had submitted a methodological document for the preparations of the November conference, backed by France. Mr. von Sydow acknowledged that shortcomings also concerned resources in men, as 40,000 men out of the 60,000 the EU should have are in fact currently deployed in the Balkans. "We still don'ts have a clear idea of our margin of manoeuvre (…) that's why we want to proceed with a systematic evaluation", he concluded.
Javier Solana stressed that the financial commitments made by Member States needed strengthening. "The Commitments must not only be those of the defence ministers, but the governments as a whole", he stressed, adding that a recent Eurostat poll shows that 75% of Europeans questioned were in favour of a European defence policy. Mr. Scharping told the German press that the EU already intended setting up a small intervention structure by the end of the year, and Minister Hubert Scheibner, hoped before the Austrian press that his government would take the necessary financial decisions, and called for a joint meeting of defence and finance ministers, when the time was right. Dutch Deputy Defence Minister Henk van Hoff is said to have considered for his part during the meeting that European defence would remain a "paper tiger" if undertakings were not respected.
Ministers also discussed contacts with Russia, in their talks on how to involve third countries in the European crisis management policy. Mr. von Sydow intends meeting Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov on 17 May. "We would like to deal with strategic issues (…) and practical subjects of capability usage", he indicated. Following his visit to Moscow this week (see below), Solana said he was optimistic. "It's a question of crisis management and not of defence, I don't see why there should not be cooperation", he said. "It's not a question of doing something overnight, as military capabilities will only have to be operational in 2003, but we must begin the dialogue", he added.