EAPC
Defence
Ministers
Meeting
Brussels,
12 June 1998
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Future NATO-led Peace Support Operations and the Development of the PARP
Process
Speech by Mrs. Anneli Taina, Minister of Defence of Finland
Mr. Secretary General,
My prepared statement, which has been distributed to you all, deals with
the development of crisis management capabilities for Peace Support
Operations. It is closely tied to the situation in Kosovo as well. It
connects developing programmes to actual reality.
- IFOR and SFOR are unique operations. They broke new ground in bringing
together NATO members and Partners, together with other organizations, in a
multinational effort at deterring hostilities and stabilizing peace in
Bosnia. As a result, our common involvement in former Yugoslavia has
greatly impacted our thinking on the shape of future peace support
operations. The lessons learned in Bosnia will form an essential basis
upon which we can build the political-military framework for multinational
peace support coalitions in the future.
- On the basis of these lessons, it is clear that NATO will continue to
have a crucial role in future multinational peace support operations. Only
the Alliance has force structures and decision-making mechanisms that are
capable not only of providing for deterrence and collective defence but are
also adaptable for robust crisis management and peace support operations.
It is equally clear that, for political as well as military reasons,
future peace support operations will most likely include both the Allies
and the Partners working together toward a common goal.
- This underscores the importance of establishing procedures and
mechanisms for integrating the Partner contributions into a NATO-led
operation. There seem to be two broad areas of common interest that have a
bearing on the development of the NATO-Partner ability to function
effectively in peace support operations: first, interoperability of the
forces involved in the operation and, secondly, the possibility to engage
together in the planning and decision-making of the operation. Let us
examine both of these issues briefly here.
- First, as far as interoperability goes, it seems that we should
continue to focus on the development of common doctrine and procedures,
particularly in the areas of command and control, logistics, as language
and communications skills. Our general goal is to create interoperable
forces and qualified staff personnel that can be effectively used for peace
support operations, and one of the key tools to reach this goal is the
NATO- initiated PfP Planning and Review Process, PARP. It is the
structured nature of that process - establishment of priority areas,
setting up of clear targets, identification of the requirements, and a
careful joint scrutiny of what the Partners have accomplished - that has
made PARP an effective and useful way to develop Partner countries'
capabilities for future peace support operations.
- The 1998-2000 PARP cycle further increases and deepens the choice of
interoperability objectives (IO's) available for the Partners, addressing
capabilities for the full range of peace support operations. Also, the
fact that the PARP process will be expanded to include Partnership Goals
(PG's) is a step in a right direction. New forces and capabilities could
be related to combat support and combat service support units, in other
words to capabilities such as combat engineering units, transportation,
logistics and medical services. They could also include such relatively
scarce assets as CIMIC or NBC capabilities. A humanitarian mine-clearing
capability would certainly be useful. The introduction of PG's will
facilitate the formation of Partner Force Packages to be utilized for
generic as well as specific planning purposes, and after the activation of
CJTF headquarters, make available packages or elements for the actual
implementation of future peace support operations. This will in due time
contribute a substantial addition to the combined resource pool for peace
support operations.
- Thus, the lessons learned so far have highlighted the importance of
common interoperability goals. But they are just one side of the coin.
The other side is that the Partners should be allowed to be involved in
force planning and political oversight as well as specific peace support
operations planning as early as possible. Our experiences from Bosnia have
clearly brought home this conclusion. The beginning of the IFOR operation
could have been smoother, had the participating Partner nations had a
chance to be involved in the NATO planning and decision-making process
significantly earlier than actually happened.
- We have now reached the stage in the NATO-Partner cooperation where
Partner officers have entered the Partner Staff Elements in some chosen
NATO headquarters. That is a positive step indeed. From the Partner
viewpoint, it would also be useful if in the future peace support
operations those Partner countries with relevant troop contributions would
also be allotted staff officer slots in operational staffs. This argument
applies particularly to the CJTF operational staffs. Such officers could be
earmarked by each potential troop contributor well ahead of time, they
could be trained in special courses and through CJTF staff exercises, and
they could form a pool of trained staff personnel for eventual peace
support operations.
Mr. Chairman,
- In my brief comments I have chosen to focus on some practical steps
that could be taken to enhance NATO-Partner cooperation when preparing
ourselves to face the challenges of future NATO-led peace support
operations. Very substantial results in this cooperation have been already
achieved, as NATO has opened its structures to the Partners. The EAPC will
have a key role in ensuring effective political participation of Partner
countries in the process, and the various concrete measures that I have
described above have improved Partners' possibilities of contributing in
practical ways to the planning of peace support operations.
- One of the key elements continues to be the PARP process and its
further refinement. Since that process carries such importance for the
whole, I would like to suggest that we would arrange a high-level expert
workshop, where representatives from NATO and the Partner nations could
together fully explore the future development of PARP and its ramifications
to the NATO-led peace support operations.
- Finland is willing to arrange such a workshop in early October this
year.
Mr. Secretary-General,
Finland is deeply concerned with the situation in Kosovo today. It is yet
another test case for Euro-Atlantic confidence building and conflict
prevention. A well-coordinated action by the international community is
vital when the different means available to solve the conflict are used.
Finland welcomes the measures adopted by NATO to help achieve a peaceful
solution to the crisis.
Thank you for your attention.
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