Remarks

Thank you very, very, much. I'm delighted to be here, Mr. Secretary General, and Foreign Minister Žbogar, colleagues and guests and friends. Good morning.

I really would like to begin by thanking the Secretary General for being here, and also providing us with such a strong statement, and for asking me to chair this group. I am truly honoured and delighted, and find it a great challenge. So thank you.

Since assuming his position in July, Mr. Rasmussen has guided our Alliance with a sure hand, while urging us all to think hard about how to make NATO even more effective in the future, and his remarks today clearly point in that direction. He has taken on a very tough job at a complicated time, and he deserves both our gratitude and our support.

And I also want to thank the Foreign Minister for being such a gracious host. I personally have very fond memories of Slovenia from the time that I spent here at Bled when I was a little girl. And every visit that I have made since has reminded me that this is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and our drive here this morning would recapture that.

Fifteen years ago I came to Ljubljana for the first time as a representative of the United States and my purpose then was to invite Slovenia to become a part of a new arrangement called the Partnership for Peace. And it's exciting to be able to return now and to be welcomed by a full-fledged NATO ally and a Minister of Defence, and it's an honour to meet you and see you.

Of course, as NATO's membership has expanded, so has its list of responsibilities, and that's why we're here today for the second of our four seminars in which the Group of Experts will participate.

And as the Secretary General made clear, the process of developing a New Strategic Concept for NATO is designed to be an inclusive one. We plan a broad conversation that will help to clarify the key points on the full range of issues that our Alliance now confronts. And these issues are both internal and external, military and political, questions of principle and matters of planning. They concern where we should be operating, what our objectives should be, and how we might best prepare ourselves to succeed.

Last month in Luxembourg our panels addressed NATO's enduring purpose, its core tasks and its political role. And today what we're going to do is study the lessons from current operations and the dangers posed by evolving threats.

Our agenda reflects the fact that NATO forces are now deployed in places that the founders of the Alliance would never have envisioned.

In Kosovo our troops are working with local authorities and with the international community to support peace and to construct a multi-ethnic society governed by law. In the Mediterranean Operation Active Endeavour provinces a necessary safeguard against the spread of terrorism. In and around the Gulf of Aden Operation Ocean Shield is helping to contain the quintessential 21st century peril, pirates with cell phones. And in Afghanistan the International Security Assistance Force is striving to create a security environment within which violent extremists are marginalized and the people can live without fear.

The purpose of our seminar today is not to micromanage these operations, but to step back and to think about how to apply the knowledge that is being gained to the challenges we will face in the years to come.

For example, we must ask what we have learned so far in Afghanistan about the danger of underestimating an adversary, the importance of establishing a unified command, the value of integrating civilian and military goals, and the complications involved in explaining NATO's actions and intentions to people from a different culture.

As we strive to do this we should recognize that each of our current missions is unique, each involves a different set of organizational partners, and none were anticipated very far in advance.

No matter how much we learn from the past, and no matter how many times we cite a list of foreseeable dangers, we must acknowledge the limits of our vision. Nuclear proliferation, terrorism in all its aspects, ethnic strife, energy disruptions, climate change, humanitarian disaster and the ever-present risks posed by national rivalry and cross-border aggression, all warrant our attention and planning, both singly and in combination.

But we cannot know with confidence exactly when or how the means of international combustion will ignite, nor what the impact on NATO's members will be.

We can, however, prepare our Alliance to serve as a predictable means for responding to unpredictable threats. Together we can ensure that our Alliance is strong and versatile, united and reliable; an Alliance that is able to make and to implement hard decisions on a timely basis.

We must never forget that although NATO itself must change continually, the fundamental purpose of the Alliance does not change. We are a community of nations that has come together to defend not only territory, but also democratic institutions and values that are essential to the security of our people.

And that purpose is not confined to any one operation, and it was not directed at any particular adversary, and it did not end 20 years ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's an ongoing commitment and it requires from us a steady effort to make the Alliance the best that it can be. And our goal today is to contribute to that objective through the questions that we ask, and the insights that our experts provide.

So I anticipate a wide-ranging and constructive discussion, and I want to thank everybody for agreeing to participate and to take the time. Everybody is very busy and has many other commitments, but for us, as the Group of Experts, this kind of a seminar is totally essential. So I thank you very, very much, and again, Mr. Secretary General, thank you so much for being here, and Mr. Minister, thank you so much for hosting us.