02 October 2003
Burns Briefs on NATO's October Defense Ministerial
26 NATO defense ministers gather Oct. 7-10 in Colorado Springs
NATO defense ministers will gather in Colorado Springs, Colorado, October 7-10 to discuss NATO's new response force, Afghanistan, the new NATO command structure, boosting defense capabilities, and the NATO-EU relationship, U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns said September 30.
Burns said that for the first time, the ministerial will feature a study seminar "somewhat like a military exercise that the defense ministers, chiefs of defense and the ambassadors will all participate in." It will focus on NATO's military transformation, specifically "on how we can use the NATO Response Force in the future."
The hypothetical scenarios will "go to the very heart of what a modern military alliance has to be thinking of - the quick and effective deployment of a military force in a crisis situation."
The afternoon of October 9 will be devoted to NATO-Russia relations, beginning with a working lunch with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and then a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council. "We are very pleased about the progress we have made with Russia since we formed the NATO-Russia Council in May of 2002," Burns said.
Burns said NATO is "in excellent shape" and has "fully recovered from the Iraq crisis of last winter and last spring, where there obviously were divisions among the members of the Alliance about the Iraq war and about the question of aid to Turkey before that war."
"We have come a long, long way in creating a new NATO, a NATO that politically and militarily is a vastly changed Alliance from what it was during the Cold War."
Concerning Afghanistan, he said NATO faces "big decisions: do we expand the mission in Afghanistan?"
Burns responded to questions concerning NATO's decision-making process, the NATO Response Force, U.S. relations with France, the creation of an EU military headquarters, European defense capabilities, Bosnia, Afghanistan, the selection of a successor to Lord Robertson as NATO Secretary General, and Iraq. Among his comments:
NATO's decision-making process: The United States "would not support any change to the consensus decision-making process that has been NATO's hallmark since 1949. ... We feel that if there's a crisis, whether it's a hostage situation or a civil war or one of our countries has been attacked or a peacekeeping opportunity, if the NATO countries believe that's a critical crisis where we should be involved, we will have the political will, united to use the NATO Response Force."
U.S. relations with France: "France is our oldest ally. France is a valued ally of the United States. While we had our disagreements here at NATO ... we are now working together on Afghanistan. ... We're working together on the Response Force. We're very much working together in Bosnia and Kosovo. The French-American relationship works at NATO. Not without its disagreements, not without its drama, sometimes, but it works. We're very grateful for the military contributions that France is making to the NRF -- NATO Response Force -- very grateful."
The creation of an EU military headquarters: "We could not support and we will not support the creation of an alternative EU military headquarters, whether it's in Tervuren or some other place, in Brussels or elsewhere. ... Neither will we support a planning facility ... There are just a very few countries who are thinking about going in a separate direction, but we would hope that those plans would not materialize because it would not be productive for the future of NATO-EU relations."
European defense capabilities: "What our European allies really need are greater military capabilities, not more headquarters built, not more officers sitting in headquarters without the troops, without the capabilities to command. ... It's our strong wish that Euros, any additional Euros, be spent on defense capabilities. ... France and the UK are the two leaders in Europe [in defense modernization]. We would just hope more countries could emulate them in creating the capabilities."
Following is the USNATO transcript of the briefing:
(begin transcript)
U.S. Mission to NATO
October 2, 2003
PRESS BRIEFING BY AMBASSADOR NICHOLAS BURNS
Drew Room, US Mission to NATO
Tuesday, 30 September 2003
[Brussels]
Opening Statement
Ambassador Burns: Okay, on va commencer maintenant. On va le faire en français ou en anglais. No. Ou en allemand? Il y en a beaucoup d'allemands ici. Alors, je parle pas allemand. Greek?
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I thought I should say a few words about the Colorado ministerial. Let me do this on the record. I'll go on background when you ask really difficult questions.
I want to say a few words to begin. I know you had a briefing by my British colleagues, I know other delegations are briefing. You'll hear from the Secretary General, but here is an American perspective on next week's defense ministers' meeting in Colorado.
First, just some facts and some background on why the United States decided to initiate this. As you know, our defense ministers get together at NATO twice a year, once here at Brussels in December, once in June in Brussels, but we also get together - they get together - a third time, usually in the autumn and almost always hosted by a national government. Last year the Polish government hosted us in Warsaw, next year the Romanian government will host us in Romania. At last year's Warsaw meeting in late September, [Defense] Secretary Rumsfeld offered that the United States would host this year's NATO defense ministers' informal and he made the decision to do that in Colorado Springs.
We're very pleased about that and proud about it because if you've ever been to the American West it's really one of the most interesting and unique parts of the country. It's a very beautiful part of the country. It looks a lot like the German and Italian and Swiss and French Alps. I think all of you who go there - and I hope some of you will come out and cover the defense ministerial - will find Colorado Springs to be a fascinating place. It's the home of the US Air Force academy, which is one of our three major service academies. It's also the home - the region is - of five US military installations. And it is the home of US Space Command, so it's a very important place in our military establishment.
Secretary Rumsfeld obviously will be the host of this meeting. He'll be there, of course, the entire time. I think the NATO ministers and delegations, Secretary General arrive on Tuesday afternoon, October 7th. Everyone will stay until Friday morning, October 10. It's an unusually long meeting. Normally of course - you know here in Europe when we have NATO meetings, ministers might come for half a day or a full day, sometimes overnight - but we're going to be together for three full days in Colorado and that I think is going to mean that there's going to be a tremendous amount of opportunity for formal conversations.
We're going to have a lot of formal meetings of the 26 defense ministers. We're going to have informal meetings. We'll have a ministers-only dinner. We'll have ministers' lunches with permanent representatives. And there will be opportunities both for formal and informal interaction, which is very good for the Alliance, for ministers who don't see each other sometimes all that often.
The people, of course, the top-level officials are the 26 defense ministers. This will be the first time that the seven invited country defense ministers will have joined such a meeting. So in that sense we're making a little bit of history. All of the Chiefs of Defense will be there. For the United States, General Dick Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, will be there for the entire time. All of the Ambassadors will be there. And there will be a number of senior defense officials from each of the defense ministries. So it's a big meeting, a big gathering. And it's going to be held at the Broadmore Hotel in Colorado Springs.
We decided to do something a little bit differently this year. In addition to the formal meetings, which we will have on Wednesday afternoon, all day Thursday and on Wednesday evening, NATO is putting on a study seminar on most of Wednesday. It will begin early in the morning and I think it will go for around five and a half hours. It will be a seminar - a study seminar - somewhat like a military exercise that the defense ministers, chiefs of defense and the ambassadors will all participate in. It will be a scenario that will focus on NATO's transformation militarily and specifically focus on how we can use the NATO Response Force in the future.
You know, if we wanted to use the Response Force in a crisis, what kind of process would we have to go through here at NATO -- on alliance consultations and decision-making -- to actually deploy a NATO Response Force? So that is the study seminar. It's unique. I don't believe we've ever done this before at such a high level. It's the kind of thing that Ambassadors do here several times a year. We have our study seminars and our exercises that our military representatives do. It's the kind of thing that our military officers do in a number of our countries -- you know in France or Germany or Britain or Italy or the United States. But it's the first time in our memory that we've done it with ministers, and there's quite a bit of excitement about it. We've had a full briefing for all of the NATO ambassadors by the individual in the United States who's organizing the entire week. So all the countries are informed about what it will be about.
It obviously deals with hypothetical scenarios, so it's not a real life situation, but scenarios that we think go to the very heart of what a modern military alliance has to be thinking of - the quick and effective deployment of a military force in a crisis situation. I can't really say too much more about it because obviously there are elements - the details of this will be apparent to all the participating countries, including all of us here at NATO, once we get to Colorado. But there will be a press briefing on it for those of you going to Colorado. I think after the seminar is over, I think Secretary General Robertson and Secretary Rumsfeld are going to meet the press and talk about it: what did we do, what was the scenario, what kind of situation did we find ourselves in, how is this useful for the Alliance. That will happen on Wednesday afternoon for those of you going to Colorado itself.
So that's kind of the background. I know Secretary Rumsfeld is very proud to be hosting this huge group of NATO officials. And it's indicative - I can say this personally - of his considerable interest in the Alliance. As you know, he was Ambassador here 30 years ago. Since I've become Ambassador he has not only given me tremendous support as our defense secretary, but he's shown a great deal of personal interest in the Alliance. I think as we in the American government have gone about over the last couple of years thinking through how NATO must change - everything we did at the Reykjavik meeting in May of 2002 and at the Prague Summit - it was Secretary Rumsfeld on our side who on the military questions invested a tremendous amount of his personal time and attention into thinking through what the US would want the Alliance to be in the future. So, I'm very happy he is hosting this.
Let me say a word about NATO, then we'll go to questions. NATO is in excellent shape. NATO has fully recovered from the Iraq crisis of last winter and last spring, where there obviously were divisions among the members of the Alliance about the Iraq war and about the question of aid to Turkey before that war. We Americans are optimistic about NATO. We will obviously believe in it. It's vital to the national security of our country. And I think it's indicative of the fact that Secretary Rumsfeld is hosting this, that's how we feel about NATO. But NATO is in excellent shape. It is on the rebound from the crisis in Iraq. I think if you look at the last two years of effort by the 17 European allies, Canada and the United States; we have come a long, long way in creating a new NATO, a NATO that politically and militarily is a vastly changed Alliance from what it was during the Cold War.
And here's how we've done that. We have new missions. Our new missions are in the greater Middle East. We have acted collectively to support the Polish division in Iraq. We have given quite substantial and significant support to the Polish division. Sixteen of the NATO countries - of the 26 - have soldiers on the ground in Iraq and the three major divisions in the coalition are all led by NATO allies - by the United Kingdom, the United States and by Poland.
In Afghanistan, NATO has taken on - since August 11th - responsibility for the International Security and Assistance Force. NATO countries are running that. We're terribly grateful to Germany and to the Netherlands for having been our leaders. Canada will take over leadership when - in the winter of early 2004. I think it's fair to say that after the Reykjavik meeting and certainly after the Prague meeting, all of our leaders agreed - and we were totally agreed at 19, without exception - that NATO had to go beyond Europe to defend Europe and North America. That's a big change from the Cold War, you all know that. Afghanistan is our first out of Europe operation in fifty-four years. The collective operation to support Poland in Iraq is the second; we're very proud of that.
We're taking in seven new members. Now they officially become members and formally in May of 2004 at the Istanbul Summit where our heads of government - President Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder and President Bush and Prime Minister Berlusconi and all of the other leaders will meet. But the seven have already started meeting with us. They are part of our Wednesday meetings. They are with us - we are sharing all of our classified information with them. And they are de facto members of the alliance. They are strengthening us. They are shifting our center of gravity eastward. All of them are in Bosnia and Kosovo, all of them are in Afghanistan and six of the seven are in Iraq.
We continue our Balkan missions, where I think NATO has made a critical difference in Bosnia. We're very proud of what NATO has done in Bosnia in stabilizing that country. Eight years - nearly eight years - into our military presence in Bosnia. And very proud, four and a half years later, of what we've accomplished in Kosovo.
The other person who will be in Colorado - to get to NATO-Russia relations - is Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. We have on Thursday afternoon, October 9th, a lunch - it will be a lengthy lunch, a working lunch - of the 26 countries with Russia to discuss our common interests and the common issues that we've identified in the NATO-Russia Council. Following that, there will be a NATO-Russia Council meeting of the 20 countries in that Council. Nearly all of Thursday afternoon will be spent with Minister Ivanov. We are very pleased about the progress we have made with Russia since we formed the NATO-Russia Council in May of 2002. Russia is by a long shot one of our very most important partners and we're very pleased that Minister Ivanov will be there. But that's another way that NATO has changed, the development of the NATO-Russia relationship.
I think the most profound change - next to the out-of-Europe missions that NATO is now focusing on, particularly Afghanistan. In Afghanistan we've got to make big decisions: do we expand the mission in Afghanistan? We're talking about that right now.
The most profound change has occurred militarily. This is what we've done in the last year alone - a year ago this month, a year ago this week, at the Warsaw ministerial, Secretary Rumsfeld proposed that NATO should create a NATO Response Force. A capability we've never had in five and a half decades. At Prague the leaders agreed on it. We are now on the verge of having an early unveiling of our capability to have that. NATO Response Force will be a big issue in Colorado. It'll be the subject of this study-seminar that we're having on the first full day of the ministerial. In just over a couple of weeks time, our military will be ready to begin to talk about how we formed - in its earliest stages - the NATO Response Force. How we are achieving an early capability - even this autumn, and how I think it will have a revolutionary impact on the Alliance's ability to engage in peacekeeping, to engage in any kind of crisis management situation that we need to do.
Building on that, of course you know we had a great success last - in June - we agreed on a new NATO command structure. It's a dry subject, perhaps, for journalists, but for those of us in NATO it's a critical subject. We have altered the way we are organized militarily. We have streamlined it. We have made the commands more flexible because we know that we've got to have a deployable capability in NATO. We have got to be able to deploy our forces at a moment's notice and the new command structure, which is in place, will do that. We created an entirely new command: Alliance Command Transformation in Norfolk, Virginia. We have a new Supreme Allied Commander, Admiral Gambastiani. He and General Jones, our two Supreme Allied Commanders, will both be in Colorado. They'll both give presentations: Admiral Gambastiani on how his command can help transform NATO militarily - defense reform, defense capabilities, military doctrine; General Jones on Afghanistan and on Bosnia and on Kosovo.
We're working, of course, also on our Prague Capabilities Commitments. How can we, all of us, spend more and spend more wisely to give the Alliance greater military capability.
And the last issue that I think will be - perhaps not on the front lines of Colorado, but certainly giving us a framework - will be the NATO-EU relationship. We very much want to elevate NATO-EU relations. We in NATO want to support ESDP [European Security and Defense Policy]. We are doing so because we are supporting actively the EU operation in Macedonia. It was planned at SHAPE. The operational commander is the NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Admiral Feist, the German admiral. We codified, we negotiated Berlin Plus, and agreed to it in March of this year. Berlin Plus is the way forward to good cooperation between NATO and the EU. I'm sure that issue of Berlin Plus will be high on the agenda of a lot of the ministers in Colorado.
That's the background to Colorado. We're pleased to host this meeting. We think it will be a success. We think it will point the way towards NATO unity on all these issues that we sometimes lacked at the beginning part of this year on the Iraq crisis. And we certainly believe that NATO has a great role to play on behalf of all of our countries in the future.
With that, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
Yes. Ladies first. Always.
Question: Ambassador you said that NATO has to make decisions quickly. Do you think that the decision-making system process should change?
Ambassador Burns: No, we would not support any change to the consensus decision-making process that has been NATO's hallmark since 1949. It has worked for NATO. It worked when we were twelve countries; it worked when we sixteen countries, at nineteen, it will work at 26. We had a great review of this at nineteen last year, and we all decided unanimously that we liked the way the consensus decision-making apparatus works.
It does work. It sometimes means that we talk for days or weeks about issues, but we always get to a decision and we've been a very active, decisive organization, in the Balkans in the 90s and certainly now in Afghanistan. So there's no reason to change that. We think the consensus way of doing business has been one of our great strengths in the Alliance. What it essentially does: it protects all of us. It protects the small countries in the Alliance and it protects the big countries and all those in between. NATO is a political organization but it's also a military organization. The decision to deploy troops - whether it's to Kosovo in a war in 1999 or Afghanistan to keep the peace in 2003 - is just about the most important decision that any government can make. I don't think any of us would ever want to subordinate that to a majority vote. You don't want to be on a losing end of a majority vote where you have to deploy your troops and put them into a dangerous and difficult situation. Better to go all united, as we went into Bosnia, Kosovo and now Afghanistan.
Question: Let me just follow up on that. Given that some countries have a very lengthy process (inaudible), how do you dovetail that with the idea of a rapid deployability (inaudible)?
Ambassador Burns: Well, I think that if you look at NATO's history, we were all ready for five decades - we were all prepared at twelve and at sixteen - to defend western Europe had that been necessary during the Cold War. There was never a doubt that we would have acted on a moment's notice from the late 1940s on to defend Europe. We didn't hesitate in the autumn of 1995 after NATO used its military power, its air power from September 30, 1995 in that two-and-a-half-week campaign against the Bosnian Serbs and after the Dayton Accords in November, we went right to a deployment within one month after the Dayton Accords being signed. We were decisive. In Kosovo, we acted decisively. And then when the UN asked NATO just in March and April to take on the Afghan mission we acted within a couple of weeks. And by April 16 had made the decision collectively at nineteen to go into Afghanistan.
So there somehow has been this myth that has developed in a number of our countries, including my own sometimes, if you read our own press, that somehow NATO can't make decisions - that NATO is indecisive. Nothing can be further from the truth, if you look at NATO's recent and past history. We feel that if there's a crisis, whether it's a hostage situation or a civil war or one of our countries has been attacked or peacekeeping opportunity, if the NATO countries believe that's a critical crisis where we should be involved, we will have the political will, united to use the NATO Response Force. I believe that will be the way that we act together in the future.
Question: General Jones [Gen. James L. Jones, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe] has been reported as saying that he would like to cut short on the (inaudible) and that there will be situations where he feels (inaudible). It has been reported as saying that.
Ambassador Burns: I have not seen those reports. And I'd be cautious about such reports. I know you will be, because you're very experienced journalists. But because it's well understood by all of us that NATO is run by the North Atlantic Council, by the heads of government and the ministers. We ambassadors are their humble servants. Any decision to deploy NATO force of course has to be made by the political authorities in the Alliance. And I don't believe there is any disagreement here with General Jones at all. I think I'm sure he must have been misquoted. I've not seen the press reports that you refer to.
Question: I was going to ask the same question about General Jones. In fact, I think he has made the same point on a couple of occasions. But, could I also add, you spoke about the speed with which NATO was ready to act in Kosovo and (inaudible), but you only have to look to earlier this year when the United States and Britain felt that they had a crisis on their hands, other nations didn't. And how long did it take for the Alliance to come to a decision then?
Ambassador Burns: Well, if you look back on all of our history - fifty-four years - you can see that NATO was not used in Korea in our earliest years; NATO was not used in Vietnam and in every year of our existence we've had disagreements. Think back to the Pershing missile decisions of the early 1980s. I think back to the early 90s, before '95, of our disagreements across the Atlantic on Bosnia. But we did act. We did act decisively in Bosnia and in Kosovo.
And, frankly, we did act in Iraq. We acted on February 16 - eighteen of us - to make the decision to give Turkey the critical support it needed. We had a tremendous row. It took a couple of weeks. It took us a couple of weeks. You were all there and reported it. But we did act. And we met our Article 4 responsibility to Turkey.
I believe in the wake of that, there's a tremendous degree of common good will for all of us to put that behind us and to unite. We all have the same threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. We all see that threat. We've talked about it. We agree on it. I think if any of our countries were threatened, you'd find NATO united behind them.
So yes, of course we've had our disagreements and there have been instances where we haven't agreed and we've taken time to make an agreement and to step forward, but NATO always comes around in the end. That is something quite unique in the history of multilateral institutions. I think NATO has a record of unique effectiveness, despite the fact that sometimes it takes us awhile to get there.
Still on this issue? Different one?
Question: On the NATO Response Force, I understand that the US had no intention to put many troops, soldiers in this force and that on the contrary the force would be one of the main competitors. I wonder what is your comment about this division of (inaudible) between France and the US? And if I may ask you another question, it's about the so-called Berlin summit. As far as I can understand there was a sort of political agreement between the UK, Germany and France to create a European headquarters. Do you welcome the creation of such a European headquarters?
Ambassador Burns: Well, on the first question, I'm very happy to reassure you that the NATO Response Force is a multinational force and the United States has committed significant resources to its success. There was a force generation conference in July - July 16 if I'm not mistaken - and the United States did command a significant number of resources in terms of people, and in terms of capability. I'm equally happy to say (inaudible). We're all in this Alliance together. We all have to take responsibility for common initiatives. I think France has been a leader in this process. I think the United States has, too. We suggested the NATO Response Force. We conceptualized it; suggested it to the Alliance. We're very happy that all the allies agreed. I think we've had very good French-American cooperation all along the way on the political talk, in deciding to set up the Response Force, and now in the military, in working together.
This gives me an opportunity to say that France is our oldest ally. France is a valued ally of the United States. While we had our disagreements here at NATO -- the US and France in February and March -- we are now working together on Afghanistan. France and the United States are together in training the Afghan army. We're working together on the Response Force. We're very much working together in Bosnia and Kosovo. The French-American relationship works at NATO. Not without its disagreements, not without its drama, sometimes, but it works. We're very grateful for the military contributions that France is making to the NRF -- NATO Response Force -- very grateful.
And your second question, I don't think it would be appropriate for me to comment on a meeting of the three heads of government when there wasn't even a communiqué issued. This is a private discussion. So I don't think I should comment on the Berlin summit. If you'd like to talk about the issue of ESDP or Berlin Plus or Tervuren, I certainly can defend the American position on those issues.
Question: (regarding NATO and the EU)
Ambassador Burns: NATO and the EU negotiated seven agreements in March of this year. Together they're called, in diplomatic parlance, Berlin Plus. Those seven agreements essentially come down to one objective: that NATO will support ESDP. NATO will support the evolution and growth of Europe's security and defense capabilities, of the EU taking on new missions, as we've supported the EU in Macedonia. But that it will be a cooperative and collaborative relationship, where the EU will not seek to create duplicative institutions. For instance, the EU wouldn't seek to recreate this headquarters. The EU would not seek to recreate Mons, where we have the world's greatest military planning capabilities at SHAPE. And so we are committed to Berlin Plus. The great majority of countries in the EU are committed to Berlin Plus and to that definition of Berlin Plus: that if the EU wants to take on a significant security mission, it will come to NATO. NATO will support it. NATO will help plan it. We'll give the EU access to SHAPE. In the case of Macedonia, the operational commander is our number two NATO military official. It's worked beautifully.
What we could not support, and do not support, and we've said this many times, and both Secretary [of State] Powell and Secretary Rumsfeld have said this publicly: we could not support and will not support the creation of an alternative EU military headquarters, whether it's in Tervuren or some other place, in Brussels or elsewhere. That would be, we think, duplicative, needlessly costly, and that would in essence, we think, be a contradiction to the Berlin Plus Agreements. Neither will we support a planning facility either.
So we're hopeful, we're very hopeful, that the vast majority of countries of the EU want Berlin Plus to be preserved and want it to be the center of NATO-EU cooperation. I think they've all said that. There are just a very few countries who are thinking about going in a separate direction, but we would hope that those plans would not materialize because it would not be productive for the future of NATO-EU relations.
Question: (inaudible) operation in Bunia - planned by French. Was it a problem for the US that military plans created as autonomous European operation? (inaudible).
Ambassador Burns: The French action in Bunia was tremendously useful and worthwhile. It was at the request of the United Nations that the French lead of the EU autonomous operation, I should say, Operation Artemis. We congratulate the EU and particularly the French government on what they did in Bunia. It was very worthwhile and very useful and quite decisive. But you see, there are a number of European countries that have independent planning capabilities within their own national ministries of defense.
I think as Secretary Powell said the day after April 29, on April 30th of this year, when he testified before the Congress, he said: What our European allies really need are greater military capabilities, not more headquarters built, not more officers sitting in headquarters without the troops, without the capabilities to command. As the EU's partner and given this symbiotic relationship that we have - eleven of the fifteen EU countries are members of NATO -- obviously, we talk about this all the time. It's our strong wish that Euros, any additional Euros, be spent on defense capabilities. I think you've heard the Secretary General and Secretary Rumsfeld talk about this.
The greatest weakness that we have in the Alliance and the greatest challenge is the fact that a number of the European allies don't have the kind of modern military technological capabilities that would allow them to participate effectively in peacekeeping or in a crisis situation far from Europe -- a situation like Iraq or Afghanistan or even Bunia. France is one of the few countries that does have the capabilities. France is a leader in the Alliance in having modernized its military, having spent a lot of money to do so. General Jones made some very complimentary comments about France yesterday. I wholeheartedly agree with him. France and the UK are the two leaders in Europe. We would just hope more countries could emulate them in creating the capabilities. We think that time, attention, and money ought to go into solidifying NATO-EU operations, not in creating institutions that in the long term could become competitive with NATO as opposed to cooperative.
On this subject still? Anyone else on this subject?
Question: Do you think that the plan by these four countries is a symptom of the kind of strains that we saw coming to head within the Alliance earlier this year?
Ambassador Burns: I don't think it's proper for me to talk about motivation. You would have to ask the four countries, the governments involved as to motivation. I would just say that I think Tervuren has become a negative symbol in NATO-EU relations. We would hope that it would not be such a symbol because we would hope that the energies could be turned by both of us, NATO and the EU, to more productive enterprises.
The fact is that the real challenges ahead of us are: Do we have enough strategic lift to get European soldiers from Europe to Afghanistan? The answer is no, so we're hopeful that the European governments will take action to give themselves that lift. Do we have enough Special Forces for all the operations that we have in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, in Iraq? Do we have secure communications? Do we have air-to-air refueling? Do we have enough combat service support? These are - counter-intelligence - these are the challenges to the Alliance. This is where Euros and dollars need to be spent. We think it's a far more productive exercise to talk about capabilities rather than headquarters.
Question: Ambassador, talking about Bosnia, it has been said that some people in the Pentagon, have been in favor of withdrawing completely all the US personnel from the Balkans. Do you think that that is possible, that it could accelerate the take-over from the Europeans on Bosnia?
Ambassador Burns: I can tell you, I've said before and I'd like to say it again, we're tremendously proud of NATO's record in Bosnia. NATO made the critical difference in the autumn of '95 and has since then. We certainly in my government are aware of the fact that the EU announced at the Copenhagen Summit last December that it wished someday, to assume responsibilities for SFOR, for the NATO military force there, but no decisions have been made in my government about that and certainly no decisions have been made in NATO. In fact, we've not even had any official conversations in NATO about this, so I think that any press reports you've seen to that effect are premature.
Question: (inaudible) history of the capability gap. [Outgoing NATO Secretary General] Lord Robertson's mention of deployability gap. (inaudible).
Ambassador Burns: I said it because I believe it to be true. If you put things in perspective, we are unified that the great threat to NATO countries comes from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. That threat is in places like the Middle East, in Central Asia, and that's why NATO is in both places. We have entirely reconstructed our military structure and forces to deal with that threat and we're taking on seven new members and we have our first out-of-Europe missions. That is an Alliance that is dynamic and that has changed significantly. We still have problems. The greatest challenge is, as I said before, this capabilities gap.
Frankly, we've had that capabilities gap since April 4, 1949, the day that the Washington Treaty was signed. If you look back at President Kennedy's discussions with his counterparts and President Nixon's and President Carter's and President Clinton and now President Bush, we've always had this dialogue. It is acute now because during the Cold War we had massed NATO's forces in Western Europe. But now, we have a different military challenge. That is to express power over huge distances, to get men and women and their supplies and their infrastructure to Afghanistan is an enormous undertaking and we don't always have the right equipment for that. That's what needs to be done, so yes, it's a weakness, but it doesn't contradict, I think, the quite dramatic progress that NATO has made over a very long time, over the last two years.
Question: (inaudible)
Ambassador Burns: I'd be happy to. We inherited, we have a UN Security Council mandate in Afghanistan. The ISAF [International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan] mandate, as you know, is a 65 by 24 kilometer circle around Kabul. The German government has come forward to suggest that it believes NATO should run that mandate. Germany itself wants to develop a provincial reconstruction team in Konduz. We're enormously grateful to German leadership for suggesting this. Since Germany did so three weeks ago, we have been in discussion at NATO about whether we should expand ISAF and how we would do that. We're still in the middle of that discussion. A number of countries, as you know, have been publicly supportive of this. We very much value the German suggestion in particular. I think there's a great deal of support for the German idea of going into Konduz. But as you all appreciate, there's a very complicated set of issues that has to be answered before we can make any formal decisions, so we're right in the middle of the debate. They'll be a discussion tomorrow, but I would not anticipate any decision because these things take time.
But we have to look at all sorts of things. I think everyone realizes that if we do undertake an expansion, we'd have to have a new UN Security Council resolution. The German government has said that. We would have to think through the military resources both in human power and in technologies and in money to affect that expansion. So we're looking at all these military questions. We're right in the middle of it. I wouldn't expect any decisions in the days to come, but I think we're making good progress in the discussions. We're very pleased that the discussion is underway. Again, a tribute to Germany for having started this discussion.
Question: To what extent are the deficiencies in . . .are they a factor in that discussion?
Ambassador Burns: Some of them are. You probably heard this from General Jones, but we have a current mission and mandate in Kabul, and we've taken over the operation in Kabul, but we have still not met the military requirements for that mission. We're still looking for additional technology and additional human power, men and women, to go out and staff that Kabul mission. One of the points a number of countries have been making are that before we go out and begin to expand the mission outside of Kabul, we have to fulfill the mission inside Kabul. We are working on that with great determination right now, and a great deal of urgency to do that. A number of military issues have to be discussed before we can come to final decision.
Question: May I ask you an off the record question?
Ambassador Burns: Yes.
Question: Why did the US Administration say that (inaudible) was not the right person as Secretary General?
Ambassador Burns: Let me say this. I'm surprised by the question. The process of choosing the Secretary-General is by its nature and historically has been, as some eminent NATO historians have written in the pages of the Herald Tribune in brilliant articles, by necessity secretive and confidential. All of the discussions that took place, leading up to the appointment of Mr. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer were confidential. Consequently, none of us are going to reveal those discussions and none of us would even comment on any of the discussions we had.
I would also say that there were no formal candidates, and so there was no one who was rejected. We were very careful not to have any up or down votes on candidates. We only met last Monday at 3:30 pm in Room One when we were sure that all nineteen countries were ready to support Mr. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. He is going to be an outstanding Secretary General. He has great experience in NATO. He has served here, he is very well thought of and has a lot of credibility in Europe; he has the great confidence of my government and was someone who was a real bridge across the Atlantic -- across some troubled waters in the winter of this year. I think all of us feel we made an excellent choice. He will not be in Colorado because he is still the Dutch Foreign Minister and he has lots to do, but he'll certainly be here the first week of December when we have our ministerial meetings. We look forward to working with him as of January 1.
The other thing I should say is that George Robertson is busy these days because he's traveling to each alliance capital, being given medals for the extraordinary job he has done as Secretary-General. He will go down as one of the great Secretary Generals, one of the few who made a transforming difference in the Alliance. This agenda that we talked about earlier, the military and political transformation of NATO, is his agenda, so we're all grateful to him, to George. I'm sure he'll be honored with a lot of champagne toasts next week in Colorado. We won't make him ride a bull in the rodeo, though.
I forgot to tell you that in the last night in Colorado, after all the work is done, Secretary Rumsfeld has arranged for all the NATO officials to go over to the American Rodeo Hall of Fame, which happens to be in Colorado Springs, to see an American Rodeo. We have threatened to put some of our colleagues up on a bull, but we won't do it because it is life threatening. I think it's going to be fun. I think it's going to be a uniquely American thing to see, and I think all of our European friends are interested in doing that. That'll be the culmination of Colorado, and if you're lucky enough to get out there as a journalist, we'll sneak you in the rodeo. Not only sneak you in, we'll invite you in.
Question: Concerning the relationship between Belgium and the US, are you ready to react to the financing of the new NATO seat?
Ambassador Burns: I think there's been a recent improvement in relations between Belgium and the United States, but since I'm not responsible for them, I really shouldn't talk about them too much, but here at NATO, we are working very well together. Belgium has an outstanding ambassador, Ambassador Swielande, we are very pleased that there has been progress made in throwing out of the Belgian judicial system cases against American officials, which were unfair and should not have been made in the first place. I think I have indicated - I know Secretary Rumsfeld did when he was here in June, that we need to see an end to that process and hopefully we'll come to an end to it.
And of course, we need to be assured that in the new law, and the new legislation that has been passed, that there will be no possibility of a repetition of this very sorry episode of these nuisance lawsuits being made against senior officials of my government. So I don't think we are at the end of the process, but we're certainly at a much better place than we were in June, but not at the end. We'll have discussions here at NATO about the headquarters issue, and when the time comes to make these decisions, we'll confront those issues, and I think that time will be sooner rather than later. We have not yet made a decision to activate the funding for the headquarters because we're not at the end of the process that we agreed upon with the Belgian government.
Once that process is ended, then of course we'll have to have some discussions with my government in Washington, and we'll see what the results of that will be. I want to say that the process is ongoing. We have had very good cooperation with the Belgian government but we're not at the end of the process yet, and I hope very much that we can get there as soon as possible.
Question: I'd like to come back to NATO ... Bosnia ...no communiqué ... re-creation of the capacity to plan and conduct military operations. Where is the red line?
Ambassador Burns: You refer to a paper from the Summit. I never saw a paper published - a communiqué from the Summit - and we have not been given any formal paper by the three governments on that Summit, so I simply cannot discuss a paper that we haven't been given in any formal way by the three governments. But my remarks on ... were on ESDP and Berlin ... that I gave to your colleagues obviously represent the views of my government.
Question: Where is the kind of limit you mentioned ...no duplication. When does the pain start? Not militarily, but politically?
Ambassador Burns: For whom?
Question: NATO.
Ambassador Burns: NATO is the pre-eminent security institution in Europe. It is the only institution that binds America to Europe. It is the vehicle by which the US fulfills its treaty responsibilities to its allies. We provide for the continental security of Europe, we provide for the nuclear defense of Europe. Nothing can replace NATO. NATO is pre-eminent. But we wish to have a cooperative, collaborative relationship with a growing, emerging, stronger European Union. It's in the interests of my country, and all the Allies to see the EU develop that capacity. To do it as partners, falling (inaudible) Is our strong wish, and I must say the wish of the great majority of EU countries. And that's probably about as much as I should say on this issue, but I have also answered several specific questions. But we are feeling no pain here. We are confident that NATO is the preeminent institution and will be for the future. We're a pain-free alliance.
Question: I meant are you itching.
Ambassador Burns: Not even itching.
Question: Question of Iran or North Korea. Do you think there is any context you might discuss?
Ambassador Burns: These are not issues in which NATO has collectively taken positions, but they are both issues where there has been a lot of conversation among allies, bilaterally, across the Atlantic Ocean. Obviously, they are issues that we discuss every day with our European allies, but NATO has not taken a formal position on either the issue of the IAEA in Iran and NATO has not taken a formal position on North Korea, and we are not a global organization, we're a regional organization, trans-Atlantic, now with a greater interest in the greater Middle East.
Question: You haven't spoken yet about Iraq. NATO up to now supported the Polish...
Ambassador Burns: Well, we were very proud of NATO, all of us, nineteen countries, to support Poland [in commanding the multinational division in Iraq] and are currently supporting Poland militarily through collective support measures. That will continue as long as Poland wishes it to continue, which I think will be the duration of this mission. The US has not approached the alliance to take on a collective role in Iraq because we understood from the end of the war, end of the formal fighting, that a group of allies did not agree.
Obviously, the efforts to try to bring Americans and Europeans together are now focused in the UN Security Council and that's the proper place for them to be. But it's never been a realistic possibility that NATO would go into Iraq collectively, as we are in Afghanistan or Kosovo, simply because we have not agreed. We talked before about consensus - you have to have consensus for that to happen.
Question: There is supposed to be a debate on Iraq in Colorado Springs?
Ambassador Burns: I'm sure the issue of Iraq will come up because, as I said, the US, Poland, the UK and all NATO members are in Iraq. Sixteen of the NATO allies have troops on the ground, so I'm sure there'll be lots of discussion about the progress of the peacekeeping and other issues associated with Iraq. I'm sure that will come up throughout the three of four days.
Thank you very much.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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