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NATO Retools for New Missions in Africa and South Asia

26 May 2006

General Jones says 2006 is a pivotal year for alliance

Washington -- The commander of U.S. and European forces says 2006 will be a pivotal year for NATO.

By the end of 2006, NATO will have assumed its peacekeeping responsibilities in Afghanistan, General James Jones said in a May 25 National Press Club address.

In June, the alliance will demonstrate the capability of its response force in the Cape Verde Islands, he said.  This will mark a milestone on the way to the response force achieving full operational capability by year's end.

NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe also pointed to the planned November meeting of heads of state in Riga, Latvia, where leaders will discuss such topics as energy security, critical infrastructure security, drug trafficking, nonproliferation and terrorism.

NATO is not “an alliance that is showing signs of fatigue or irrelevance,” Jones said.  “To the contrary, this year is a pivotal year,” he said, perhaps more so than any of the past several years.

The alliance is undergoing fundamental change and transformation, the commander of U.S. forces in Europe said, adding that the focus of the alliance is shifting almost "180 degrees in terms of its military capabilities and culture.”

But the alliance also needs to do more to ensure that it has sufficient funds to effect change, he said.

“I think NATO’s best days are very possibly in its future.  But we must do a better job of understanding what that future is, of explaining it to our nations on both sides of the Atlantic, and of understanding that the future of NATO is not to be a reactive, defensive static alliance, but it is to be more flexible, more proactive," Jones said.

CONFLICT PREVENTION

The alliance must take on missions to prevent future conflicts instead of reacting once they have begun, he said.

Jones pointed to NATO’s mission in the political decision-making process in Africa that involves the United Nations, the African Union and the Sudanese government as they figure how best to facilitate peacekeeping efforts in Darfur.  “Suffice it to say that the mission right now calls for enhanced capacity building of forces assigned to the African Union,” he said, “and controlling and enabling the troop lift of African battalions into the Sudan for rotation and then back home again.”

Jones also addressed the issue of violence in Afghanistan.  He said conflict there is driven by a number of groups, including remnant al-Qaida forces, some Taliban fighters and members of drug cartels.

He also disputed the suggestion that the Taliban or the insurgency has returned with greater strength in Afghanistan. “Until such time as we are able to stitch up the capabilities of the Karzai government,” Jones said, “we’re going to have . . . areas of instability.”

For more information about U.S. policy, see International Security.

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)