Video background briefing

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. This is Jamie Shea, the NATO spokesperson here at NATO Headquarters and today I'd like to give you once again a backgrounder briefing on what has been going on in NATO over the last month since the last time that I appeared before you.

Now obviously, and this is something which is very widely known, the key event has been the arrival of a new Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer of the Netherlands, entered the building for the first time as Secretary General on January the 5th and becomes the 11th Secretary General of NATO, succeeding Lord George Robertson of the United Kingdom and the third Secretary General from the Netherlands.

Now the transition has been a very smooth one indeed because Jaap de Hoop Scheffer resigned as foreign minister of the Netherlands last December and that meant that he had a good month in order to meet with Lord Robertson and the senior NATO officials in order to be briefed on current NATO issues and to be fully prepared to take over the reins in January. So there's been a great sense of continuity in the Alliance since his arrival.

When Jaap de Hoop Scheffer arrived in a short address to the press he said that his two key priorities were to ensure the success of NATO's mission in Afghanistan, that NATO could not afford to fail in this, its most ambitious peace-support operation so far; and I'll have more to say on that in just a few moments.

And secondly, he wanted to be a transatlantic bridge builder. He acknowledged that transatlantic relations in 2003 went through a particularly difficult time with the conflict in Iraq, but that he was hopeful that now the Iraq conflict was something that we could all put behind us and that as NATO heads up to its next summit meeting in Istanbul at the end of June, the theme of transatlantic reconciliation, the allies working together on a whole range of international issues, that that could be the dominant achievement of the meeting.

And as somebody who has equal credentials on this side of the Atlantic as the other side of the Atlantic he seemed... he feels legitimately that he can play an important role in helping to accelerate that process of reconciliation.

Over the last couple of weeks the new Secretary General has been meeting all of the staff, sharing his first meetings with the North Atlantic Council and of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and receiving his first high level visitors.

One of the first trips that he's made happened last Thursday and Friday when he went to see the NATO troops, the SFOR mission in Bosnia, and then on Friday on to Kosovo to visit the KFOR troops in NATO's Kosovo mission.

And I don't think it was entirely coincidental that the Secretary General's first trip outside NATO should be to the Balkans, the theatre where of course NATO was so intensely engaged in stopping the wars in the 1990s and where in Bosnia over the last eight years, and Kosovo over the last four years, we've been staying behind to make sure that the job of securing a lasting piece can be guaranteed.

With so much focus these days on Iraq, on Afghanistan, there is sometimes a sense that the Balkans are finished business, which unfortunately is far from true, or that somehow NATO is no longer making a priority out of its SFOR and KFOR missions. And the Secretary General chose precisely to go to Sarajevo and Pristina to make it clear to the international community, as well as to the local people in Bosnia and Kosovo that this idea of international disengagement is not at all the case.

When he arrived in Sarajevo his first message was that NATO will remain engaged.
Now it is true that NATO is reducing its forces in Bosnia at the moment from 12,000 down to 7,000. That was decided by NATO ministers before Christmas. But the Secretary General was at pains to point out that that reduction is not because of burden shedding, it's simply because the situation on the ground has improved markedly over the last 12 months. Over one and a half million refugees have returned to their homes in Bosnia. We've seen great progress in institution building. We've seen a defence reform law, which means that the two entities and their armed forces are now co-operating much more closely together. And so NATO's estimates is that the security situation allows this sizeable reduction in the SFOR presence.

Another important theme which he touched on is the possibility that the European Union will take over the SFOR mission from NATO sometime later this year. But again he underscored to his audience that there would be continuity. If this happens there will be a seamless transition between the end of the NATO force and the beginning of the EU force, so there won't be any kind of security vacuum.

And at the same time NATO will remain engaged. Currently NATO and the EU have become informal talks on how they can plan together for the transfer of the SFOR mission and at the same time NATO is thinking of a headquarters which it can leave behind in Sarajevo, which would continue to do certain key functions in the field of defence institution building, and hopefully on the assumption that by that time the conditions would have been met for Bosnia-Herzegovina to join the Partnership for Peace, which will of course give NATO, therefore, the grounds for a permanent engagement in helping defence reform in Bosnia itself.

So NATO's role may well change, but NATO itself will certainly remain engaged in a positive way.

Another issue was indicted war criminals. A few days before the Secretary General arrived in Sarajevo there had been an attempt, unfortunately an unsuccessful attempt by SFOR forces to apprehend Radovan Karadzic and of course NATO is disappointed that that attempt was not successful, but it does show that NATO forces are actively seeking to ensure that all of those indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague for war crimes are brought to justice and Karadzic is one of the most notorious names.

But the SFOR forces were able to gather a very good information and intelligence material and as the Secretary General said, repeatedly, Karadzic can hide, but he can't run. That sooner or later he will, like so many of the other indicted war criminals, have to face international justice in The Hague.

But certainly NATO continues to expect the full co-operation of the authorities in Bosnia, whose responsibility it is to apprehend and transfer indicted war criminals.
The fact that the Bosnian-Serb police had participated in the operation to detain Radovan Karadzic shows that this message is getting across. And when the Secretary General met with the Prime Minister, Mr. Terzic, in Sarajevo on Thursday afternoon, he on behalf of the Bosnian authorities, pledged co-operation, their full co-operation in tracking down the indicted war criminals.

So that certainly is a positive element on which to build.

I mentioned earlier that we hope that Bosnia can join the Partnership for Peace sometime in 2004. Apart from international justice for war criminals, another key element is the institution of a defence reform law, which has been passed by the Parliament, and the Secretary General's message was that the Bosnian authorities should now implement this law in full, which would lead to the establishment of a ministry of defence for the first time of a unified Bosnia-Herzegoniva High Command, with a defence minister and a chief of the defence staff. So that would be considerable progress.

But the SFOR troops under General Virgil Packett of the United States, as SFOR commander, even with their reduced numbers, are doing an absolutely sterling job. For me one of the highlights of the day was a helicopter flight up to Zenica in the north of Bosnia where the SFOR soldiers have a scheme under way to melt down thousands of weapons that have been handed in since the end of the Bosnian war in 1995. And the Secretary General, with myself there too, witnessed just hundreds of these weapons, many of which still looked very dangerous indeed, were put into a smelter and melted down. It was almost like swords into ploughshares.

The following day the Secretary General, as I mentioned, went on to Pristina and Kosovo to visit the KFOR soldiers. The security situation in that part of the world unfortunately has not allowed NATO to make the kind of substantial force reductions that we've been able to make in Bosnia. There's been a small reduction, but we are still going to be keeping, for the best part of this year, 17,500 NATO troops in Kosovo.

One of the key themes was how we can gradually restructure the sectorial and command arrangements in Kosovo so that we can get as much mileage in terms of capability as we can out of the forces that we are leaving there.

One of the things, again, that struck me, was the fact that the central sector, which is now being restructured, is under the command of a Finnish battalion. Now Finland is not a member of NATO, but it shows just how far we have come in our relations with our partner countries that now a Finnish commander can be in charge of an entire NATO sector and that concerns one of the most important in Pristina and the surroundings.

We went to Obilic, outside Pristina, to visit a village which has seen more progress than most parts in Kosovo in enabling Serb refugees to come back and resettle, preaching the sort of ethnic tolerance which we have to see elsewhere in Kosovo if we are to really achieve a self-sustaining peace.

The Secretary General was briefly by the KFOR commander, Lieutenant General Kammerhoff of Germany, on the current operations. And we had a meeting in the afternoon with Mr. Holkeri, who is the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations, and then with President Rugova and Prime Minister Rexhepi.

The Secretary General's message here was quite firm. As you undoubtedly know in 2005 there is the possibility that the international community will review the status of Kosovo. But the Secretary General's message was that he expects the communities, all of the communities in Kosovo not to waste 2004 believing that decisions will be taken in 2005 regardless of the progress or lack thereof on the ground in Kosovo.

So his message was to the Kosovar Albanians to continue to work on implementing the standards, the eight key standards which have been laid down by the United Nations before such a review on status can be successfully carried out.

For example, on return of refugees, on economic reform, on these kind of issues.
And his message to the Serb community in Kosovo was to engage also in that process by joining the various working groups on standards. That participation is going to give you a greater voice than non-participation.

And secondly, that Kosovo and Belgrade have to engage in the proximity talks that were started in Vienna last November, so that relations between Serbia and Kosovo can gradually be eased in the field of freedom of movement, transportation, energy, economic links and the like.

But it's true that there is no government in Belgrade at the moment, although hopefully one will be formed soon, but the Kosovo Albanians should not use the absence of a government in Belgrade as a kind of pretext for procrastination to put off the difficult decision and not to move forward.

So that was a firm message, but a necessary one in terms of making Kosovo move ahead.

So a very interesting visit.

Now back in NATO headquarters this week. What's on the agenda? Afghanistan, I mentioned that earlier. Of course it's still one of the top subjects. Last Wednesday the North Atlantic Council gave its final endorsement to the concept of operations for the expansion of the NATO mission between Kabul. This is a topic which I've addressed over the last couple of months because it's an ongoing priority for the Alliance.

Already since Christmas NATO has expanded beyond Kabul by taking over the responsibility for the provincial reconstruction team led by Germany in Kunduz in the north of Afghanistan. And NATO was very busy in January providing security for the Loya Jirga, the meeting of the leaders of Afghanistan, the tribal leaders from the provinces that came together and finally agreed on a new Constitution for Afghanistan. And the NATO troops, of course, made sure that that event passed off remarkably peacefully with a successful outcome.

The essential aspects of our work now is to make progress on a operational plan, an op plan, in order to expand NATO's support to a minimum of five provincial reconstruction teams by this spring. Thereafter, a little later on, to all of the provincial reconstruction teams. Currently there are 12 of them, and if all of the plans go ahead to set up more over the next couple of weeks and months, there could be almost 20 of these provincial reconstruction teams by the summer.

So it's obviously a very ambitious undertaking for NATO to be able to support all of them, but that is the level of ambition that we're heading towards, and a little bit later on, once that process has been accomplished, also look for greater synergy between the Operational Enduring Freedom under the leadership of the United States, which has been there since the aftermath of September 11th to fight the Taliban and the al-Qaeda terrorist elements, and the expanded ISAF role in the hands of NATO.
So you can see that we've got a great deal of work cut out in Afghanistan, but we are making a good start.

One piece of good news. Last week ISAF were able to mount an operation in Kabul, the capital, to take possession of a 150 heavy weapons handed over by the local armed factions, which will now be put in storage. And this is going to ease the security situation a great deal and obviously one of the things that we can look at is how similar operations could be carried out in other Afghan cities to ensure that warlords do not have heavy weapons, which an be destabilising for the security situation.

Finally, very much business as usual now in the Alliance after the Christmas and New Year holidays. This Wednesday afternoon we will have the first meeting in the new year between NATO ambassadors and the political security Committee of the European Union, Bosnia and a possible handover to the EU there of SFOR. Obviously it's going to be a subject under discussion.

Secretary General is receiving, as I mentioned, high level visitors. Today we have former foreign minister Cetin of Turkey, who is on his way to Kabul to be NATO's senior civil representative. Last week Mr. Sanader, the new Croatian Prime Minister called together with Mr. Hryshchenko, the Ukrainian foreign minister to see the Secretary General.

On Thursday and Friday the Secretary General is off to Davos, like so many other world leaders and chief executive officers of companies for the 2004 World Economic Forum, where in addition to giving speeches, he will be having a whole series of bilateral meetings with world leaders.

Last week the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council met and celebrated ten years of Partnership for Peace. Yes, it's already been ten years since the NATO summit of 1994 when PFP was first launched, and the example I gave you of Finland commanding the NATO sector of Pristina in Kosovo I think says more than any briefing I could give just how far we have come in integrating our partners into normal NATO activities, but also really gaining the advantage of their insights and their contributions in handling security challenges together. So we marked last week that tenth anniversary.

Also now, emerging on the horizon, is the NATO Defence Ministers' Meeting on Friday the 6th of February, which will take place just before the Munich International Security Conference in Germany, of course. That will be a very good opportunity for the NATO defence ministers, together with, of course, Don Rumsfeld of the United States to discuss Afghanistan, to discuss the international security scene and the preparations of the NATO summit in June.

So I think that's our next important political rendezvous, and obviously I'll be able to tell you lots more about that in my next monthly briefing. But I think that's the essential news from NATO Headquarters, this week at least.

Thanks very much for tuning in, for listening, and all the best to all of you and hopefully our rendezvous is already prepared in four weeks time.