Brussels, 13/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - The special meeting of the North Atlantic Council with the participation of Heads of State and Government, held on 13 June at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels, allowed Allies to hold a four-hour discussion with President Bush on the situation in the Balkans (mainly in the Macedonian Republic), questions of a strategic kind raised by the US missile shield project, the continued Defence Capabilities Initiative (DCI), relations with the European Union and with Russia and on Alliance enlargement. In his preliminary remarks, Lord Robertson said this "small summit" was along the lines of the Washington Summit in April 1999, and is in anticipation of that scheduled for autumn 2002, in Prague. All the Heads of State and Government of the nineteen NATO member countries, accompanied by their Foreign Ministers, were in Brussels, as well as the EU's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), Javier Solana.
The meeting allowed participants to engage directly with the US President in a discussion on "US thinking on new concepts of deterrence, the strategic environment, and the means of dealing with the challenges facing the NATO of today, and the NATO of tomorrow. This included US thinking about non-conventional and asymmetric threats, missile defence, nuclear force reductions, building the right mix of offensive and defensive forces, countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and continuing our transformation of NATO's armed forces", said Lord Robertson during the summit. "NATO has embarked upon a major thinking process about the challenges we face and the best means of addressing them", and the Allies are engaged in a "continuing process of consultations, before decisions are made" in order to ensure that the interests of all are "fully considered and taken into account in forging a common NATO approach", he said. "As Secretary General", he added, his "personal and urgent message" is that "NATO's credibility is its capability".
The Nineteen welcomed the progress made by the EU in defining its role in future crisis management activities and establishing the Headline Goal" (a rapid intervention force of 60,000 men). Such progress reinforces NATO's call for nations to strengthen their overall defence capabilities in the context of DCI, stressed Lord Robertson during a press conference. He expressed, moreover, the Alliance's satisfaction that an end was put to two wars in the Balkans and assistance brought to two million refugees to help them return home. He stressed that NATO maintains 50,000 soldiers in the region (SFOR and KFOR) to be joined by a further 10,000 soldiers from partner countries. President Bush reaffirmed when speaking of the Balkans, said the Secretary General, that "we all went in together and we shall all come out together".
President Bush again presses for new nuclear safety framework and says he is pleased with allied reactions
During a press conference after the meeting, George W. Bush again called for a "new nuclear security framework". The US President told participants at the summit that the ABM Treaty, concluded at the time between two rival super powers, "no longer makes sense". He said he was pleased with the open and constructive reactions from Allies and noted a "new receptivity" towards the missile defence (MD) system, that should be part of this new framework. The United States is not asking Allies to engage in any predetermined system. It is asking them to "think differently" about the post Cold War world, he said. According to President Bush, the Europeans have understood the "logic" behind the American proposals and he plans to speak about this to President Putin on Saturday, he said. He considered that it is essentially a dual approach: consulting on defensive weapons and acting on offensive weapons rather than waiting for endless negotiations (he was referring here to the unilateral reductions proposed in his speech on 1 May).
President Bush also spoke out very clearly in favour of NATO enlargement, "without red lines or vetoes" from outside. "We must strengthen our alliance, modernise our forces and prepare for new threats. We must expand cooperation with our partners, including Russia and the Ukraine. And we must extend our hands and open our hearts to new members, to build security for all of Europe", Mr Bush said during the summit.
Chirac: need to preserve existing strategic balance
In his address at the Summit, French President Jacques Chirac stressed that "the progress made towards a European defence is irreversible, since it is part of a deep-seated and more general trend towards European integration. The emergence of a European Union fully taking its place on the international scene is now an historical fact of life (…) Yet at the same time, the transatlantic bond remains essential, for it is the bedrock of the Allies' collective defence". As or the "debate over the changing strategic balance", Mr. Chirac spoke of the need to: "preserve the strategic balances" ("the ABM Treaty is a pillar," he stressed): - step up efforts to combat proliferation, irrespective of action taken regarding the antimissile project (see next page)
During the summit, Chancellor Schroeder hoped in particular that European allies not members of the Union would be adequately involved in EU-led peace operations (regarding the problem of Turkey, according to the Lusa news agency, in Luxembourg on Monday, Portuguese Minister Jaime Gama called on Turkey "not to place a political obstacle to what is an essential goal of Europe's affirmation of itself". Should it continue to do so, he said, "consequences will have to be drawn "as to negotiations in other frameworks…", as a country cannot ask to join an organization "and at the same time try to impede the central goals of that organization".