Paris, 02/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - According to a statement made by the political committee of the Western European Union - Interim European Security and Defence Assembly at the end of last week in Washington, which brought together representatives of the US government and think-tanks, the USA are "clearly pushing" for a huge expansion in NATO. No members of congress attended the Assembly, to the regret of Dutch Liberal, Jan Dirk Blaauw. After the Summit of NATO candidate countries on 27 March in Bucharest, where US Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, declared that the USA were for as comprehensive enlargement of NATO as possible, Mr Blaauw stated that he did not expect the Americans to present a list of candidates that they consider should be invited to join NATO at the next Alliance summit in Prague next Autumn, to NATO partners without prior consultation. Mr Blaauw believes that the USA will want to, "avoid the problems of the last enlargement round in Madrid", which involved countries in the East (France was strongly pushing for Romania to be admitted to the alliance - Editor's note). Mr Blaauw is expected to present his report on, "Next Challenges for Euro-American security co-operation" at the next Assembly plenary session on 3-5 June in Paris. He believes that the Americans now see the EU's military activity as an added value to NATO, with the ESDP being able to relieve NATO of some of its burden.
Wolfgang Behrendt, German Social Democrat and Vice President of the Assembly, stressed that any major military operation against Iraq would require a specific UN mandate and should not be based solely on existing Security Council resolutions: "It is necessary to try to resume UN inspections first, only then could a new mandate be sought and achieved". Mr Behrendt also pointed out that even if there were no concrete plan of military action, the US Administration is determined to act against any of Saddam Hussein's programmes involving weapons of mass destruction. He explained that, "The US government is very firm on that point and will not wait for European NATO allies to join their resolve".