Joint press point

(INTERPRETATION THROUGHOUT)

JAMES APPATHURAI (NATO Spokesman): Ladies and gentlemen, the Secretary General and the Prime Minister will each make opening statements and then we'll have time for a couple of questions. Secretary General.

ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN (Secretary General of NATO): Prime Minister, I am very happy to receive you here, so soon after your appointment as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, and I look very much forward to fruitful cooperation with you and your government.

And let me take this opportunity to stress how grateful we are for the Czech contributions to two of NATO's biggest operations: ISAF in Afghanistan and KFOR in Kosovo. The Czech Republic takes its responsibility as ally very seriously and the Czech contingents are highly appreciated.

In today's meeting, we discussed three main topics: Afghanistan, the upcoming NATO Summit in Lisbon, and missile defence.

As regards Afghanistan, our main focus now is to work towards transition to Afghan leadership. Transition is condition-based, not calendar driven, and transition should not be misunderstood as withdrawal.

The Afghan Security Forces are demonstrating significant progress in both quantity and quality. However, more trainers will be needed to meet the expansion and development goals for the next year, and if this is not addressed the lack of additional trainers will likely slow down transition.

Trainers are the ticket to transition. So we would welcome any extra efforts by ISAF contributors to send more trainers to Afghanistan. We also discussed the NATO Summit in Lisbon, which will take place in November. We want the Summit to be a visible demonstration of a modernised and strengthened Alliance, embodied by a new Strategic Concept.

I also have to say that the adoption of a new Strategic Concept must go hand in hand with concrete actions and decisions on how we will counter emerging security challenges.

And among the new threats are missile attacks. The missile threats are real and growing. And I agreed with the Prime Minister that we should come to a decision in Lisbon to develop a NATO missile defence capability. A capability able to deliver a comprehensive and collective response to the ever-growing threat from missiles. And if we decide to develop a NATO missile defence system we should also invite Russia to cooperate, linking a system of ours with capabilities of theirs.

In general, NATO-Russia relations are advancing, and in order to give further impetus to that I have today issued invitations to all 29 countries within the NATO-Russia Council to participate in a NATO-Russia Summit in Lisbon, to take place on the 20th of November this year.

PETR NEČAS (Prime Minister of the Czech Republic): Thank you, General Secretary. For me it is important to underline after today's meeting that the Czech Republic can reaffirm continuity of its foreign security policy based on the key pillar of our foreign policies maintaining NATO. NATO is the key pillar and NATO is a key security component in the foreign security policy. And the Czech government, under my command, stresses strongly the NATO link.

Again, the key mission for NATO is the territorial defence of its members under Article 5. So we welcome the new Strategic Concept, which hopefully will, again, say that the key component and the key pillar of NATO is the security of territorial defence of its members according to Article 5. But we are fully aware of the new security challenges and NATO has to be prepared for these challenges like mass destruction, proliferation, technology proliferation and ballistic rockets proliferation and international terrorism. These are all new challenges and NATO has to be prepared to confirm again the ability to defend the territory of its members under Article 5. But also the capability to face new threats and the new Strategic Concept hopefully will react to this, including restructuring of the NATO work as regards the chain of command and NATO and civil part of NATO.

And also I am very glad that I can assure the Secretary General that our contribution to the Afghan mission is a long-time priority for us and our military contribution to the NATO operations is still focused on Afghanistan. This is our responsibility as an ally and we have also spoken about possible changes. We really stress the necessity to ease the transingence of Afghan soldiers and Afghan police. It is necessary to contribute to this and we are ready to discuss the restructuring of our contribution in Afghanistan, maybe increasing the training part, that this will be a subject of the Czech government meeting and negotiations.

We expect the Ministry of Defence to prepare their possibilities and after passing through the Czech government, we will go to the Parliament. We want to change the approach. In the past, missions were put to vote year on year. We want to vote for missions of two years and the subsequent year we will give the prospect so we could plan our participation in a better way. That's an important way of contributing our responsibility as an ally.

Q: Czech News Agency. I would have questions for both gentlemen. For Secretary General, Czech Foreign Minister after Monday's meeting with you told us that you are not very happy about pullout of Czech troops from Kosovo, so can you just explain what's your position on that?

For the Prime Minister, have you told the Secretary General how many soldiers or how many should be sent to Afghanistan and how many extra forces would be sent into Afghanistan, and what is your point on Kosovo?

ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN: As regards Kosovo, first of all, I have taken the opportunity today to express my strong appreciation of the Czech contribution to the KFOR mission. I've also been informed about Czech considerations to reduce the contribution to KFOR.

Let me stress that all partners within KFOR are right now considering a reduction of the military presence in Kosovo and that follows a plan provided by KFOR. It is actually our plan to scale down.

The problem is, and that's the question I have raised, the problem is that in total, in total, the reductions seem to be too big and we have to make sure that even if we scale down we will still have a presence in Kosovo to sufficiently ensure stability and peace. So I have encouraged all KFOR partners to reconsider the size of their reductions. I do not question... I do not question their reduction, because that is part of our strategy, but I have urged all allies and partners to reconsider the size of their reduction.

PETR NEČAS: I would like to contribute. It is true that we want to focus more on the Afghan operation and that is our long-term liability and long-term responsibility and participation.

Of course, in Kosovo we have been a force to (inaudible) and we are ready to have the numbers that could ensure the security in Kosovo. In the case of threats we would maybe increase the numbers. Considering Afghanistan, that is really our long-term priority and we are already based on the structure to consider increasing the numbers of troops. But I want to stress that we don't want to reduce significantly our presence according to the needs of the Afghan operation.

Regarding, for example, the training teams, this is going to be a question for further government negotiations and parliament negotiations and opposition negotiations because we would surely want our responsibility as an ally in Afghanistan to be a long term liability. And this liability should not be influenced by domestic political combats and we have to reassure either political consent.

Q: Prime Minister, with the General Secretary you have spoken about the situation in the Czech army and purchase of military technology?

PETR NEČAS: We haven't spoken about such concrete issues. NATO itself doesn't talk into the acquisition processes of its member states. Transparency or non-transparency of acquisition processes is our domestic task. So non-transparency and non-effectiveness of acquisitions is ineffective allocation of the restricted military budget funds. So therefore it's our domestic task to increase the transparency of acquisition process in army, which is one of the ways to use it more effectively.