Opening remarks

Good afternoon everybody. Thank-you for attending our pre-ministerial ‘on-background’ briefing today.

Let me give you the practical details of the Ministerial which will basically focus on three main issues; our missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo and our defence capabilities.

On the practicalities of the meeting, I would like to tell you that tomorrow, on Tuesday, the Secretary General will give a doorstep statement at the front entrance at around 11:30 a.m., ahead of the beginning of the meeting - the first working session of the defence ministers - which will start tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. So the doorstep at 11:30, the first meeting starts at 1:30.

The first working session will focus on defence capabilities. We will then have a meeting of the Nuclear Planning Group at the level of ministers.

The ministers will continue their discussions on capabilities over a working dinner. After that dinner there will be no media opportunity, but before the dinner, the Secretary General is going to give a press conference at 6pm.

So basically, after the doorstep, the first time that the Secretary General will address the media will be at 6pm.

Then on Wednesday, the second day of the Ministerial, the ministers start their meeting at 8:30 a.m. and will focus their discussions on the Kosovo mission with our non-NATO KFOR partner nations.

A meeting in ISAF format will follow that, including also the NATO defence ministers and the ministers from non-NATO ISAF partners.

And a final press conference by the Secretary General will take place at around 1 pm on Wednesday.

Of course, as usual, we are going to livestream all the press press conferences on our website so that we also try to facilitate your work.

Thank you.