Report

Thank you, yes, this is a special challenge because the deputy secretary general was chair of this panel, so we'll try to do a good job.

As he said it's "NATO and its other Partnerships". The deputy secretary general opened this panel by reminding us that security today knows no boundaries and that the need for partnership because of that goes well beyond the Euro-Atlantic area.

He highlighted the growing interest in the Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative in terms of enhancing cooperation and making substance to these relationships. And he reminded us that this whole other partnerships issue is not limited to those two initiatives but that countries like Australia, New Zealand and Japan also share with us a common interest and concerns and are natural partners in addressing some of today's security challenges.

He was followed by State Secretary Vášáryová of Slovakia. She gave us the perspective of a new member and basically highlighted that it's payback time for the new members, that it's time for them to be contributing to some of our partners' efforts and programs with NATO and she highlighted a number of areas where they could particularly bring added value in this and that is in the area of developing strategic security formulas for countries in terms of developing defence reform programs, regional cooperation and building cooperative programs and identifying cooperative activities with NATO.

Looking to the future she highlighted interoperability, political dialogue, and strengthening partner involvement in decision making process on operations to be three key areas that we should be looking at for development with our partners.

Ambassador Benattallah of Algeria brought a welcomed perspective from the Mediterranean region. He raised three important factors for strengthening the Mediterranean Dialogue.

First was ownership, and he said initially there was some concern about whether this was an initiative that was being generated without the benefit of their input but felt now that this is truly a cooperative effort and partnership and felt comfortable with the direction that it was headed.

Second, he talked about the implementation aspects and here he put on priorities political dialogue, that we need regular meetings with the MD Ambassadors to talk about political issues; and he highlighted that perhaps it's time to bring in partners, other partners in the Partnership for Peace process, into the discussions with the Mediterranean Dialogue countries, or alternatively to have Med dialogue countries in as observers in EAPC or PfP meetings because he highlighted that many of the issues that we're dealing with on defence reform, defence development and cooperation are often the same.

And then he also talked about in the area of implementation the importance of practical cooperation with NATO and highlighted a number of areas including defence cooperation, interoperability, defence reform and possibly border security as fertile ground for further cooperation.

And last he talked about the political environment being important as this initiative develops. And in here in particular it's obvious that the developments in the Middle East peace process as well as Iraq will be important to the development of this initiative in some sense, in terms of building confidence in the region and the relationship with NATO and NATO countries.

And he was followed by Dr. Larrabee of the Rand Corporation, who highlighted that there's been a changed focus in NATO since 9/11 and that the- and also because of the consolidation of democracy in central and eastern Europe, that because of this there is a new focus and a new energy on the democracy and development of relations in the Broader Middle East.

He highlighted again something that has been said before but the importance that this ownership is shared and that we avoid a made in Brussels approach to this, and he listed a number of open issues that we need to be considering.

The first, Iran, should at some point in the future it be in the ICI, should we isolate or engage Iran? The Palestinian Authority is a second issue, what role does NATO have in relations with the Palestinian Authority and how should we approach this issue? Third, terrorism, how to deal with that on the agenda of the Med Dialogue and ICI initiatives.

Fourth, Partnership for Peace for the Middle East. Should we have the same- essentially draw forward the kind of energy and activity we had for the partnership in central and Eastern Europe towards the Greater Middle East?

And relationship complementary, excuse me, with the European Union was important as we go forward in this, and last the relationship with the Middle East peace process, and he highlighted again that our success is linked here, and also left open the question of a possible future role for NATO at some point in the future.

His last point was that we need to keep in mind that as the energy is absorbed on this Broader Middle East effort that we need to not lose sight that there is still a third way of democratization happening in the Euro-Atlantic area and the challenge will be to keep the focus both on the work still to be done in the Euro-Atlantic area while looking beyond.

The discussants were Mr. Valasek from the Centre for Defence Information in Brussels, and he had two main points that he raised. One was that as we move further away from central Europe in terms of our development of our relationships that we're losing one of the most attractive tools we've had in promoting democratization and defence reform, and that is the prospect of future membership. And we're going to have to deal with this dilemma of how the Alliance takes on these big tasks of building these cooperative relationships without the incentives that we sometimes had in the past.

And second he talked about the NATO-EU relationship hanging over the discussion of all of this. The question being is NATO still unique, or will it remain unique? And NATO needs to continue to reinvent itself to keep on the cutting edge and suggested that the contribution of non-EU countries is one of the key aspects that makes NATO special in this context.

And last, Mr. Carroll, of the Club of Madrid, brought a useful perspective from a non-security organisation highlighting the importance of democracy and he mentioned that not only do modernization and democracy go together as the Secretary General suggested this morning in his speech, but integration and democracy go hand in hand, and he urged NATO to first put democracy first, without democracy there is no security.

Second, that defence reform should be on the top of our agenda and third, that NATO needs to work with international partners well beyond the security realm as the relationship between the political and security is ever so important in the broader sense.

In the discussion I would just highlight a couple of key themes that came out.

First, that there will be at some point in time a need to consider new members to our partnerships in the Broader Middle East. Comments suggested that countries like Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and even Iran at some point may come up in the discussion as potential future candidates.

Second, we need to find ways to include partners in new formats, that there was some concern that while we have all these initiatives, there's not enough horizontal information being exchanged, and so the question was whether we should put together a broader forum that would include the Partnership for Peace, the Med Dialogue, the ICI and the contact countries all together, or whether perhaps there's some subsets of those where groups are observers in other groups, or whether another alternative would be variable geometry based either on the issues or on the regions that you could bring groups of countries together to try to get this exchange of information and greater synergy going.

Third, the Black Sea came up in our discussions as well, in the context that as we look at some of the challenges, the security challenges that we're facing jointly with our countries of the Mediterranean Dialogue and ICI that in fact many of these are the same challenges that the Caucusus and the Balkans are facing and we should look at ways to build that synergy.

Fourth, we need to make sure we have the resources to meet the expectations as we carry these initiatives forward and a colourful comment was that we need to make sure that we're not a big hat with no cattle as we move forward on this.

And last, the same- many of the same comments that came up in the first panel came up in the second panel as well. These issues of democracy, reform and legitimacy--I would highlight here on legitimacy not just of the countries we're dealing with, but of our institutions ourselves in dealing with these countries and our relationships--and that in doing that we're going to need new tools potentially to promote democracy as well as to assert the values that we share. And the question that was left hanging here is: Does NATO need to consider the possibility that we would have to have an expulsion policy at some point in the future if a particular country went too far in the wrong direction?

So, I'll stop there, it was a very rich discussion but couldn't do it all justice.