Secretary General's remarks

Mesdames, messieurs,

Je suis très heureux de pouvoir m'adresser aujourd'hui à vous qui assistez à cet important symposium. Bien qu'il n'en soit qu'à sa deuxième édition avec les Partenaires, cet évènement est déjà considéré par beaucoup comme l'une des activités majeures du PPP.

Vous avez examiné hier les moyens de rendre le Partenariat pour la Paix plus opérationnel.

Aujourd'hui, je voudrais avant tout élargir la perspective du Partenariat pour la Paix en replaçant son renforcement dans le contexte politique plus large de la transformation de l'OTAN. J'espère ainsi vous faire mesurer toute l'importance d'une participation à ce Partenariat pour la paix renforcé.

On a dit que réformer l'OTAN était une gageure tant l'organisation évoluait rapidement. Je crois que beaucoup d'entre nous ici partagent ce sentiment. En effet, depuis le début de cette décennie, l'OTAN évolue à un rythme difficile à suivre. Nous avons changé nos politiques, nos stratégies, nos structures. Parler d'une nouvelle OTAN aujourd'hui n'est pas pure rhétorique : d'une Alliance à orientation défensive, essentiellement passive, l'OTAN est devenue un instrument actif au service du changement politique en Europe. Aujourd'hui, l'Alliance atlantique est à bien des égards un agent du changement politique. L'OTAN a un rôle à jouer pour favoriser la stabilisation de l'Europe centrale et orientale, associer davantage la Russie et l'Ukraine aux grandes évolutions européennes et forger de nouveaux liens avec ses voisins du sud de la Méditerranée. En outre, en créant une Identité européenne de sécurité et de défense en son sein, l'Alliance apporte une contribution importante à l'édification d'une Europe plus unie et, par conséquent, d'une relation transatlantique plus mûre.

La possibilité de voir l'OTAN remplir le rôle de catalyseur politique découlait d'une appréciation essentielle portée par l'Alliance au début des années quatre-vingt-dix : dorénavant la coopération serait l'instrument stratégique clé pour façonner notre environnement de sécurité. Au lieu d'investir nos ressources politiques et militaires dans la défense contre une agression militaire de grande ampleur, nous pourrions désormais axer nos efforts sur la création des conditions permettant l'évolution pacifique à long terme de notre continent.

En résumé, au lieu d'empêcher la concrétisation du "pire scénario possible", nous avions maintenant l'occasion de nous préparer au "meilleur scénario possible" : une nouvelle architecture de sécurité euro-atlantique, dans laquelle tous les Etats auraient leur place légitime, dans laquelle les risques de conflit seraient réduits à un minimum, et dans laquelle nous disposerions d'instruments, si jamais des conflits venaient quand même à éclater.

Il fallait donc que l'Alliance s'efforce activement d'aider ses anciens adversaires à devenir des démocraties stables et sûres, possédant des structures militaires placées fermement sous contrôle démocratique. Mais plus encore, elle devait s'adapter et créer des mécanismes nouveaux pour attirer tous les pays intéressés de la région euro-atlantique dans un cadre général de coopération militaire - afin d'affronter les défis nouveaux de la gestion des crises et du maintien de la paix.

L'Alliance a donc mis en place une structure et un programme d'ouverture, en créant tout d'abord le COCONA en 1991, puis le Partenariat pour la Paix en 1994, et le Conseil du Partenariat Euro-Atlantique l'année dernière. C'est également l'année dernière que l'OTAN a invité trois nouveaux pays à adhérer à l'Alliance, qu'elle a conclu l'Acte fondateur OTAN-Russie et qu'elle a établi un partenariat spécifique avec l'Ukraine. Toutes ces étapes s'inscrivent dans l'effort plus large que déploie l'OTAN pour effacer les anciennes lignes de division et pour créer de nouvelles lignes de communication et de coopération.

PfP has become the flagship of our cooperation effort. It has exceeded every expectation. Since its inception four years ago PfP has become one of the most successful military cooperation programmes in history. It has drawn 27 states of diverse backgrounds and security traditions into an ever-closer network of military cooperation. It is simply inconceivable today to talk about security structures in Europe without mentioning PfP.

PfP's role and objectives have been clear from the outset, and they have given the Partnership a very strong operational character. Fundamentally, PfP is about preparing for and managing crisis. It is about having soldiers, airman and sailors who can understand each other. It is about interoperability and forces that can operate together.

This "job description" of PfP may sound rather technical, and thus rather un-political. Yet from the outset, PfP had tremendous political implications:

• in Bosnia, PfP not only helped setting up IFOR and SFOR, thus helping to end the violence. By helping to make such large-scale coalition possible, PfP also helped unite many nations of different security perceptions behind a common strategy. PfP thus helped avoid escalation in an escalation-prone region;

• Albania, too, demonstrates the political value of PfP. By using PfP to help re-build the armed forces of this country, we make a political contribution to stability in a region of endemic instability;

• ensuring the democratic control of armed forces also has tremendous political implications. Military forces which are accountable to a democratic civilian government are much less likely to be used for purposes that run counter to peace and stability. PfP has become our "transmission belt" to disseminate NATO's ideas on this subject. PfP thereby contributes to more healthy civil-military relations across the continent;

• PfP has also helped prepare those three countries who were invited to join NATO last July at our Madrid Summit. Indeed, between now and the formal accession of the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary in 1999, we will use PfP to involve them ever more deeply in Alliance military planning.

All this means that the Euro-Atlantic community is growing, both in quantity and quality. The pool of resources we can draw on in managing crises is growing; the share of the security burden is being spread more evenly. And the possibilities for the Alliance and its Partners to exercise decisive influence on security developments throughout Europe have grown.
So PfP is about far more than military cooperation. It is a political investment in the long-term evolution of this continent.

Despite PfP's success, I believe you will all agree with me that the potential of NATO's cooperative approaches is still not yet fully exploited: Initial gains in interoperability through PfP greatly facilitated the integration of non-NATO forces into IFOR and SFOR. But there is room for improvement. Hence the continuing emphasis on making PfP more operational.

You have already heard a great deal about how PfP can become more operational, so I will not dwell on that subject. Let me say a few words, however, on how important this process is.

Consider the crisis in the former Yugoslavia in 1993, when the Alliance and its cooperation partners were reflecting on how they might cooperate to address the problem together. Think about what we did and did not have at that time.

We had the NACC, but PfP did not exist. The Alliance had no active military cooperation programme with non-NATO nations. The debate on possibly starting a modest peacekeeping exercise programme under the NACC had just begun.

Our forces could not speak to each other, had different maps, incompatible radios. In short, we were not prepared to cooperate in a joint mission. Our mechanisms for political consultations were not well-developed. Partners had no permanent political or military representation at NATO HQ or at Mons.

In January 1994 the Partnership for Peace was established, and it rapidly evolved from a mere concept to a major contributor to peace and stability in Europe. It brought Allies and Partners together for joint exercises and other activities that broadened and deepened our cooperation and enabled us to work together.

Less than two years later we launched IFOR with the full participation of 21 non-NATO partners. It wasn't easy or perfect, but it has worked and it continues to work, as SFOR, to consolidate the peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Beyond Bosnia, the Partnership is becoming operational within NATO itself. Partner officers will soon be serving in Partner Staff Elements within NATO's command structure. They will be involved early on in planning PfP operations and will be available to join CJTF headquarters when called upon. They will move on to leadership and staff positions at home, bringing to their national assignments their own years of NATO experience.

In the future, the partnership will not only be more operational militarily, it will also have a much stronger political dimension to it. The EAPC offers that potential. It provides us with the means to facilitate consultation and cooperation between the Alliance and those Partners who participate with NATO in a peace support operation.

If we make full use of its potential, the EAPC will also provide us with a mechanism to discuss a wider range of problems that affect Allies and Partners alike: civil emergency planning, international terrorism, defence planning, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, arms control issues, and regional security, to name only a few. The EAPC may still be a rather young creation, but it is bound to gather momentum.

This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is a picture of the operational Partnership that you are helping to realise. It is the picture of a new NATO, a NATO which increasingly reflects its commitment to wider Euro-Atlantic stability in the way it is organised - with the Partnership for Peace and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council at its very centre. It is a NATO much better prepared to manage Europe's long-term evolution.

We might never be fully prepared for the crisis of the future, but we will certainly be better prepared than we have been in the past. But perhaps most importantly, by strengthening our cooperation, by adapting ourselves to the new challenges, and by preparing for crisis, we are in fact reducing the chance of that crisis ever happening. This is the real payoff. Thank you.