Posted on 27-11-2002
NATO
Globalised
Brian Kenety
PRAGUE, Nov 22 (IPS) - NATO's two-day summit ended Friday with
a decision
to drop its former reluctance to act "out of area". The Western
defence
alliance also signalled its readiness to strike against terrorist
and
"rogue states". NATO secretary-general Lord George Robertson
said that NATO
would remain "the embodiment of trans-Atlantic security". NATO
members
agreed also to fight terrorism by cementing stronger ties with
former
Soviet republics.
After admitting seven new members Thursday, NATO leaders devoted
the final
day of the summit to talks with leaders from the 27 members
of the
Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EPAC) on joint strategies
to combat
terrorism and halt the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons.
EPAC members include nations seeking to join NATO such as Croatia
and
Albania, traditionally neutral countries like Sweden and Finland,
and
former Soviet states such as Kazakhstan.
The allies agreed to create a 20,000-member rapid response force
to deal
with terrorist threats to members. The force would be available
for
deployment at seven days notice. Drawn from top air, land and
naval units
from Europe and North America, it will be up and running from
2004.
Central to the new military strategy is the Prague Capabilities
Commitments
- a set of "capabilities pledges" intended to improve the alliance's
military preparedness and close the military gap between the
United States
and its European allies.
"Linked fundamentally to capabilities is NATO's capacity to
deal with new
threats, such as terrorism and weapons of mass destruction,"
Robertson said
Friday. "No one is immune from these dangers, and the alliance
has a major
role to play in defeating them. NATO leaders have, therefore,
put the seal
on a comprehensive package, which will dramatically improve
our ability to
do so."
European members pledged to modernise their armed forces to
narrow the gap
in firepower with the U.S. NATO members will consider major
investments,
including stockpiling precision-guided weapons, developing electronic
jamming equipment to knock out enemy radar or communications,
and agreeing
a new ground surveillance system.
European members have failed to honour pledges made at the last
summit in
1999 to increase defence spending. The Prague Capabilities Commitments
seek
to make good that shortfall.
"NATO's presidents and prime ministers have each made a firm
political
commitment - the Prague Capabilities Commitment - to deliver
specific
essential military enhancement from heavy transport aircraft
through air
tankers to precision-guided weapons and protection against chemical
and
biological weapons," Robertson said. "These are decisions, not
just
declarations."
There are now eight priority categories: strategic airlift;
air-to-air
refuelling; deployable command-and-control and communications
systems;
deployable combat support; defence against attacks from nuclear,
biological
and chemical weapons; precision-guided weapons; and NATO ground
surveillance.
The NATO secretary-general said the summit had agreed on areas
where the
European allies need most urgently to improve their capabilities.
Several
NATO countries announced they would increase defence expenditure,
including
France, Portugal, Norway, and new members such as the Czech
Republic,
Hungary, and Poland.
Bush left the Prague meeting early Friday for a meeting with
Russian
President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg. He will seek to
reassure Moscow
that NATO's historic expansion is no threat to the alliance's
former Cold
War adversary.
Three former Soviet territories, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania
were made
NATO members at the Prague summit along with Bulgaria, Romania,
Slovakia
and Slovenia. "The remarkable thing about this is that it has
been done in
a framework that allowed not just the entry of the seven new
states into
NATO but the reconciliation of NATO with Russia in the new Russia-NATO
Council," said the U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice.
The view from Moscow is somewhat more sceptical. The government
daily
Rossiyskaya Gazeta said Friday: "The idea of turning the alliance
into a
world gendarme... to allow the Americans to attain global supremacy
is
opposed not just by Paris and Berlin, NATO's main European 'players',
but
also, with certain provisos, by London."
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