Åre, Sweden 25 May 2005

Euro Atlantic Partnership Council Security Forum By Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns And Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Dan Fried UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here. My name is Nicholas Burns. I’m the United States Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and with me is Ambassador Dan Fried, who is the United States Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs. Both of us have had the great pleasure to be here at Are for the last 24 hours, and I must say to our Swedish hosts that this was a magnificent setting for a meeting. We thank the government of Sweden, especially the Foreign Minister of Sweden for being our host here. We thank Sweden for being such a great member of the Partnership for Peace and of our Partnership Council. I think I’ll start there. This meeting had one great theme that ran through it, the dinner last evening and all the sessions today, and that is that NATO is more than the sum of its parts; that NATO in its modern creation is not just the 26 members, it’s also the 20 Partners. Countries like Sweden Finland and all of the countries of the Caucuses and Central Asia, the countries of the Balkans that are not members of the Alliance. Some of them have no intention of becoming members, but that are part of this Alliance because they are working with us in Kosovo, in Bosnia, in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are working on the problem of trafficking in women and children, of proliferation, of all of the issues that NATO is concerned with. And it was partnership that we celebrated over the last 24 hours. It is partnership that defines us, and the very modern NATO that has emerged in the 21 st century is based on partnership not just the efforts of the 26 members. Sweden has been – along with Finland – the leading proponent of partnership. It’s given us a modern definition of it. Sweden is more active in NATO’s military operations than many members of the alliance itself, and, therefore, Sweden is an appropriate host for this conference. I just want to give you a couple of conclusions from my perspective, and then we’ll be happy to go to questions. NATO is in very good shape. There’s no question about that. NATO has redefined its mission. NATO is more active now militarily than it was at any time during the Cold War with our missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the decision yesterday to go into Darfur in support of the African Union. There’s never been a time when we’ve been more active. So that responds, I think, to the concerns that some had a decade ago that NATO at the end of the Cold War should be in search of a mission. The missions found us and the reality of the world and the civil wars around the world, the insurrections that led to the problems of the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, meant that NATO had to respond and NATO has done it very very well. And there’s a great deal of confidence in this alliance that we can get the job done militarily, that we are the world’s leading peacekeeping force. There’s no question about that. And that we have a renewed strength, military and political, that will carry this alliance well into the future. That’s my…that would be my first thought about this meeting in the conversations in which I participated. Uzbekistan was a major focus of this meeting. We’re very sorry that the Uzbek government did not send a representative. We think they ought to have sent a representative. When times are tough, that’s when partners want to be there for discussion. I think that most countries, including my own, believe there ought to be an independent international inquiry into the events of last week, that we are all concerned by what looks to have been the excessive use of force and that countries like Uzbekistan, particularly Uzbekistan, need to be engaged in reform and need to think about how they can resolve the problems of their own societies in a more peaceful way. Darfur was a major subject of discussion simply because there’s an urgent humanitarian crisis there which everyone had seen, and now that NATO will make available a strategic lift, its logistical and communications prowess, we hope, is going to be a great help to the African Union and the increased number of soldiers the African Union needs to send there. Finally, the Balkans, which was the topic of a panel in which I participated. This is a year of decision for the Balkans: Certainly a move forward on Kosovo towards final status talks. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, to unite the country around one set of institutions and one government ten years after the war. And it is a year of opportunity for Serbia Montenegro. If they can surrender and extradite General Mladic to the Hague and Radivan Karadzic to the Hague, as well, where both men should stand trial for war crimes, the Serbs can put the Bosnian War behind them and they can finally get on to a normal relationship with NATO and the European Union. So we hope very much that in 2005 we’ll see all of those things happen. We’ll be happy to take your questions. Dan, if you have anything else you’d like to add by way of introduction? ASSISTANT SECRETARY FRIED: I would simply say that the transformation of NATO that Under Secretary Burns just described parallels the transformation of the Euro-American relationship as a whole. Europe and the United States are together working on an agenda which is outward-looking. It’s an outward-looking agenda we seek as partners to advance security, peace, and democracy in the world. This is a good agenda and this alliance is at work. UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you. Questions? Yes, sir. QUESTION: You speak in very glowing upbeat terms about NATO and where NATO is. The Secretary General would perhaps not disagree necessarily. He added something this morning and that was the need, he said, for the European Union to work more closely with NATO. Now that’s the oldest story perhaps in the NATO Alliance. But do you share that feeling and if so, why? If not, why not? UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: I think all of us believe that there has to be a closer relationship between NATO and the EU. There is a lot of room for improvement there. I think that’s felt in both institutions. But from the American perspective we have enormous respect for the European Union, for what it has accomplished, for the historic achievement of uniting Europe after the Second World War and into modern times. There’s no question that the EU plays a critical, indispensable role in European affairs. Where I think there has been a lot of discussion today and over the last several years is: what’s the appropriate relationship between NATO and the European Union? Here we Americans have a very strong view, and that is – and I think this view is shared by the great majority of European countries – and that is that what gave Europe its 60 years of peace after 1945 was the Transatlantic alliance, was the presence of the United States military in Europe through NATO and it was the fact that we kept the peace here because of our military strength. NATO still has to play that role. NATO still is the primary Transatlantic security institution. NATO has a capacity for peacekeeping and the deployment of military strength which is unsurpassed by any other organization in the world and certainly surpasses the capabilities of the EU. We do have a sense of what each organization does best. We don’t believe that the EU ought to try to duplicate what NATO does so well. We don’t believe most Europeans would want to spend the tens or even hundreds of billions of euro that it would take, in essence, to recreate NATO in a European Union guise. So, we think it’s far better for NATO to continue to be the focal point of a Transatlantic relationship. That is where the United States will put the vast majority of its efforts in terms of our strategic discussion with Europe, but it’s also where we’re going to put our military strength. There are some in Europe who are proposing that the EU build itself in opposition to the United States and NATO or that the EU become a counterweight to NATO, and that would be a colossal strategic error. Happily, very few countries support that. The vast majority of the countries want NATO to continue to be strong, want a continuation of the Transatlantic link with Canada and the United States, and the EU will be able to play the political and economic role that it does, be helpful in the security realm, but NATO remains the core of how we organize the Transatlantic community to do all the things we have to do together. QUESTION: Uzbekistan is an ally of the United States in counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan. How can the events in Andijan affect this partnership? And how far the United States are ready to go to asking Uzbek leadership for this international commission? UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: After September 11, 2001 we did establish in Central Asia the use of certain military bases to facilitate our operations in Afghanistan. And those bases were very important to us and remain important in Kyrgyzstan, in Uzbekistan and elsewhere. So we will continue to use those bases because we have, as you know, 18,000 American troops in Afghanistan and 8,000 European troops that need to be supplied, and through Central Asia is the best place from which to supply them. At the same time that does not mean that when disturbing events occur that countries like our own are silent. We have not been silent. We have communicated privately, of course, with the Karimov government our unhappiness over the events and the way they were handled and we’ve certainly made those concerns public, every day since this crisis began. And we do believe it’s appropriate, and as the NATO statement said yesterday when it was issued from Brussels, that there should be an independent international inquiry into those events. That just stands to reason. QUESTION: Mr. Ambassador, will NATO’s role in the future be more political and social? UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: I think NATO’s going to remain a collective defense organization, at its core NATO’s a military organization. The world needs an organization that can supply peacekeeping forces as we’re doing in five different places. Europe needs an institution that can defend Europe. That’s what NATO exists for as well. So at our core we’ll remain a security and military institution. We also have been an alliance of democracies politically for 56 years. We’re a political alliance. We talk about the great issues of the day. President Bush when he was here in Europe in February said that NATO ought to be the central place where the great strategic issues of our time are discussed. That will continue. I can’t see NATO becoming an economic or social development organization because we have for that the European Union, the United Nations agencies, the American government agencies. We have plenty of organizations to do that. I think organizations do best when they stick to what their comparative advantage is. QUESTION: But the NATO Secretary General this morning said about more cooperation with the UN and NGOs and even OSCE. What’s your opinion about that? UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: I very much agree. NATO has been working with the United Nations since the 1950s and NATO has worked with non-governmental organizations throughout our entire existence and I think NGOs are playing an increasingly important role in the world, so I very much agree. ASSISTANT SECRETARY FRIED: I think it is simply wrong to speak and think in terms of competition of the great institutions of the Euro Atlantic democratic family. The EU has a role that NATO could not duplicate if it tried. NATO isn’t trying to duplicate it. NATO has a role that the EU could not duplicate. The OSCE has real comparative advantages particularly in the area of promoting democracy in some far-flung places. These institutions need to work together with a sense of confidence in themselves and with a sense of purpose to go out and solve the problems and not worry so much about the institutional prerogatives, and I think we’re sorting these things out in a pretty good fashion now. QUESTION: Speaking of strategic issues, there’s one being discussed now I believe in Geneva. Sorry to go away from the immediate here. Basically the question is what do you expect to get out of this meeting? All sides feel pessimistic. How long is the United States going to wait for Europeans to continue negotiating? And if and when these issues do go to the Security Council, what sanctions eventually are we talking about? UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Good try. You know they’re meeting now so I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to comment on a meeting that is taking place as we speak and the results are unknown. I’d simply say what we have said for the last week or two, that we have very strong support for France, the United Kingdom and Germany in their efforts to negotiate a complete cessation and dismantling of all Iranian sensitive nuclear fuel cycle activities. Iran should not become a nuclear weapons power -- we all agree on that. We wish the Europeans good luck. They have our full support. QUESTION: The General Secretary told us today that there are very good relations between Russia and NATO. What do you think about the potential of this relationship? [Inaudible] future partnership? UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you. Dan and I were both present at the creation of the NATO Russian Relationship [inaudible] exactly three years ago this week. When I was Ambassador to NATO I think one of the very bright positive events of my time here was the creation of this strategic relationship. It has unlimited potential. We have often thought that NATO and Russia should not just be trying to talk together but to act together. I think the challenge for us is to move from the stage over the last three years where we talked a lot, and very productively – about counterterrorism, counterproliferation, about regional hot spots, about global problems, and move that to action. We have invited -- and Russia has accepted the invitation -- invited Russia to participate in Operation Active Endeavor, the NATO maritime effort interdiction effort in the Mediterranean Sea area. We certainly hope that Russia would take part in the peacekeeping missions that NATO has been involved in. It used to be in Bosnia and Kosovo; it is welcome to return. There is so much we can do together. We’ve learned a lot from the Russians. Russia hosted two major civil emergency planning exercises in 2003 and 2004, both involving over a thousand people. I think a lot of us learned from the great Russian capabilities in trying to respond to chemical, biological and nuclear attack, which of course is something we have to do, to learn how to protect our civilian population. So this relationship is very important to us. It’s a priority. It’s in very good shape, by the way, and has unlimited potential. We can do a lot more in the future. QUESTION: Mr. Burns, two questions. You mentioned there were a few countries, as you said, that were not in favor of improving the relations between the United States and Europe. Which are those countries? And the second question is, Central Asia is a region where Russia, the United States, and China are competing for gaining influence. What are the strategic interests of the United States in that region? UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: First, I think you have misunderstood, and I apologize, if I was at fault here in suggesting that there are countries that weren’t in favor of good relationships between Europe and America. I’m not aware of any country in Europe that isn’t in favor of a good relationship with the United States. What I did say is that there are very few countries whose governments are putting forth the notion, in essence, that Europe should become a different pole of power to the United States or a counterweight. But I’m much too diplomatic to get more specific than that. I think you know my views on that, our views, the views of our government. On Central Asia, the strategic interest of the United States is, I think, coincidental with that of Europe. That is: Central Asia is positioned in such a way that it’s critical to our ability to fight the war on terrorism. If you think about the position of Pakistan and Afghanistan, both lie in South Asia, adjacent to this region. We’ve got to have good relations with the five countries of Central Asia, politically and militarily, in order to have them help us in this war against al-Qaida which we are fighting to the present day. And the continued battle against Taliban which we are fighting to this day along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in eastern Afghanistan. These countries obviously are countries that had freedom and justice denied to them over the 70 years of the Soviet Union, but they now have been liberated, they are independent, and each has to seek their own way towards reform. We hope their future will be one of increasingly [inaudible] democratization as well as continued good relations with Europe and the United States. There is not a great game going on there, however. We’re not back in some kind of 19 th Century great game in the modern world. There is certainly room enough in the relations with these countries for Russia, China and the United States all to seek good relations with these countries and all want to help these countries to modernize. ASSISTANT SECRETARY FRIED: As Under Secretary Burns has pointed out, our interests in that region bring us to support stability of the governments there. But it’s our view, based on experience, that lasting stability comes through reforms -- that in the long run countries are stable that are pursuing sound economic policies based on reforms, on good governance, on the rule of law, and pursuing democracy. And allowing their populations to take part in the political process. So stability and the war on terror on the one hand and reform on the other do not pull us in different directions. We decided after reflection, and based on experience, that this leads us to one set of policies. Moreover, while it’s not our place to speak to the Russian government, it seems based on our conversations with our Russian counterparts that we have views about the ultimate aims of lasting stability in this part of the world. It’s just our view that stability is best taken care of through a process of reform. That’s what we support. QUESTION: A question about the possibility of Ukraine and Georgia to become a member of NATO in the future. Can you comment on this and if the Russian government will have some kind of assumption [inaudible]? UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you. The United States since April 4, 1949, the date the NATO treaty was signed in Washington, has believed that the door of NATO should be open to future members. That’s why we took in Greece and Turkey in 1952 and West Germany in 1955 and Spain in 1982 and ten countries in the last five years. NATO exists to provide security, non-threatening security, to all the European and North American countries who qualify. President Bush has made clear that while we welcome the candidacies of Ukraine, and Georgia, just as we welcome the Baltic countries, Romania and Bulgaria. The door is open, but the countries have to walk through the door. They have to meet the requirements of membership or as President Bush said, we’re a performance-based institution and therefore the door is open, but you have to meet the requirements, and those countries are in the very long and difficult process of doing just that. There are other countries in the queue. Albania, Croatia, Macedonia. We would hope in the future that after the Serbs have found a way to deal with Mladic and Karadzic. We hope that Serbia Montenegro would put itself forward, that Bosnia-Herzegovina would, so that NATO and the EU can become the twin pillars of European integration, and have a single free and united and stable Europe. That’s the strategy and we think it’s working very well and has worked well for 56 years now. QUESTION: Mr. Under Secretary, my question will be about Belarus. So as soon as the democratization and democratic reforms are considered to be the key element of partnership and cooperation, what might NATO be trying to do to deal with human rights and democracy record in Belarus apart from leaving the cooperation with Belarus? Thank you. UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Last night at dinner, I don’t think it was open to the press but I’ll just share it with you because I said it, so I don’t mind saying it to the press. There was a discussion last night at dinner about whether or not democracy and freedom could be planted in the soil of countries like Belarus or countries farther east in the Caucasus and Central Asia. I gave an answer that you will recognize; it’s a very American point of view. That is that we believe going back to the very founding of our country 228 years ago that all people have this right to be free. All people have the right to be free, and that includes the people of Belarus. What I mentioned last night was: look at what President Yeltsin was able to do for the Russians back in 1991 and ’92 and ’93; what President Lennart Meri was able to with the Estonian people. Both of those leaders argued for democracy when other people in their country were arguing for continued communism and dictatorship. Look at what Yushenko has done in Ukraine to try to bring freedom and democracy to his country. I pay tribute to President Shushkevich because he tried to bring democracy to Belarus. He voluntarily gave up the nuclear weapons of Belarus to make sure the country a zone of peace back in 1993 and 1994. It is a shame that President Lukashenko has been such a great disappointment to everyone who are friends of Belarus. The Belarusian people deserve to have what the Polish people have and the Czech people have and the Latvian people have -- freedom, democracy, the right to rule themselves, the right not to have something imposed on them, some heavy, Cold War brand of communism. So that’s why Secretary Rice met with the Belarusian opposition when she was in Vilnius. That’s why we’ll continue to support NATO. Belarus sits at this table here. Belarus was there last night, there today. They’re welcome to sit at the table, but they have to expect that we’ll be focused on democracy and liberating the people of Belarus from the very sorry leadership that they have to live with. ASSISTANT SECRETARY FRIED: I can’t tell you how strongly I agree with that. The history of Europe since 1989 has very largely been a history of freedom taking root in countries where it was not expected to flourish. Before 1989 many experts believed freedom could not flourish anywhere east of the Iron Curtain. When it did, it was believed it couldn’t flourish east of the former borders of the Soviet Union. But our President, President Bush believes, and I think we both believe, that freedom is universal in its potential and that the Belarusian people deserve no less than their Polish brethren, or their brethren in Western Europe, or any people anywhere. That is a matter of deep conviction but it is also based on experience and the historical evidence, particularly after 1989. QUESTION: Is there anything planned to be done from the side of the NATO? UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Belarus sits at our table and they’ve been sitting with us for years. Belarus is the object of a lot of discussion. People around the table, like us and our European allies, question the policies of the Belarusian government. I think that Belarus has a very limited partnership with NATO because we’re all democracies. Every single country in the alliance is a democracy – members of the alliance. So if you want to be a close partner, then it helps to be democratic too, to share the same values that we have. And that’s not the case with the government of Belarus. I’m sure it is with the people of Belarus, but not with the government. So we have decided not to extend much assistance to that government. We’re more interested in helping to support the reform element in that country. QUESTION: Is there any decision in sight about expanding American military presence in Eastern Europe among countries that are already members of NATO? If so, when and where? UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: You know that in the last several years we’ve been reviewing the disposition of American military forces in Europe. We’re in the process of making a series of changes to modernize that force presence, to make it consistent with the realities of 2005 as opposed to the realities of the Cold War. So we are on the verge of making a decision, a basic decision about some troop movements in Europe itself, but that’s not for me to announce. That will be for our Secretary of Defense or even our President to announce. I have nothing for you on that today. QUESTION: I would like to go back to the question of the EU and NATO cooperation in the future. Taking into consideration the development of capability of both institutions in peacekeeping and crisis management, so if a crisis emerges, what is the first institution to decide to intervene, NATO or the EU? And do you envisage any labor division between these two? UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: The answer is NATO. Really. We’ve had long discussions over ten years about this. NATO has the lead on the security side in the transatlantic relationship. So if there is a question of where a peacekeeping mission has to be preformed or an intervention that has to be made in a crisis, it’s always up to NATO to decide first on the deployment of troops. And should NATO not decide…should NATO decide not to be involved in a crisis, then it is possible for the European Union to decide to be involved, but only under the rules of Berlin Plus where the EU borrows assets from NATO to perform the mission. But the EU will not seek to build up permanent security institutions that would duplicate what we have built for over 56 years at NATO. You are getting the theology here, but it’s very clear theology. We signed the Berlin Plus Agreement on March 15, 2003. That’s exactly what those agreements say. We adhere to them. We always meet our commitments under Berlin Plus and the vast majority of European countries do as well. QUESTION: How long is the United States and NATO prepared to wait for an Uzbek response to international calls? What is the time frame for that and what should be such a response? UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: We’re going to have to see how the government of Uzbekistan responds. NATO made a statement yesterday morning and the European Union made a statement the day before, the United States government has made statements last week, so obviously we’re all interested in talking to the government of Uzbekistan and encouraging them to look into this very tragic incident in an objective way, in an honest and direct way, and we’re awaiting the response of the government. Thanks very much.