NATO HQ 20 June 2006

Press Briefing by NATO Spokesman James Appathurai and LtCol Tony White Multimedia Audio file (.MP3/27846kb) Biography James Appathurai JAMES APPATHURAI (NATO Spokesman): Thanks for coming. It's a beautiful day, so we will attempt to be as succinct as possible. We have a special treat for you, not one, but two Canadians present and even though we would like to talk about the hockey championships, I know that some of you would probably like to get out by 4:00 for the football, so again, we will try to keep it brief. We have here Lieutenant-Colonel Tony White, who works for the chairman of the Military Committee, and he's one of our top two people in uniform on the information side. He has agreed to come down and brief on the upcoming exercise of the NATO Response Force, which will basically begin now, and he knows all the details. I would ask that this be attributed on background, please. NATO official? LIEUTENANT-COLONEL TONY WHITE (Public Information Officer to the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee): That's fine. Military. APPATHURAI: Military official? Military official's fine. And Tony, turn it over to you. WHITE: Sure, thanks very much. Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As James said, I'm the Public Information Officer to the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, and I thought over the next couple of minutes I'd just give you a very brief overview of Exercise Steadfast Jaguar, which is taking place in Cape Verde as we speak. I don't know... can I see a show of hands who's going down there tomorrow? Okay, great. Well, I hope what I do today gives you a sense of what you might see. I will say that as exercises of this size there can be changes, so I'll try just to talk about the main points of the force that is in Cape Verde and about the scenario. And I guess if we have any questions we can hold it off until the end? APPATHURAI: No, no, we'll take questions WHITE: Okay, sure. You probably have read a fair bit on the background of Steadfast Jaguar, but obviously this is a very important exercise for NATO, more specifically an important exercise that will test NATO's ability to project core elements of the NATO Response Force. And when I say project at a strategic distance from Europe. And it'll be a deployment, an air and sea deployment and it will be to an area which has very little infrastructure, fairly austere area, and it's in a fairly demanding expeditionary setting. This exercise is what we term a "proof of concept" demonstration of the NRF model. It's the largest exercise deployment of the NRF to date. It'll involve approximately 7000 sailors, soldiers and air crew and as I said, it will be a significant distance from Europe. What this exercise will train is selected field forces of the NRF and their associated deployable headquarters. And it will demonstrate NATO's ability within the NRF structure to tailor, plan, prepare, deploy and sustain expeditionary forces in an austere environment at a strategic distance. It's going to be a robust operational demonstration of NRF's core capabilities, and I say core, because as you're probably already aware, the NRF is a force of some 25,000, but in this particular exercise we're exercising the core portions of the force. UNIDENTIFIED: C-O-R-E. WHITE: Core as in... basic. In other words, if you're going to... obviously there's infantry is involved. For the exercise purposes to strike a balance between what we want to achieve and what we want to test versus the cost, it's not necessary to deploy the entire amount of infantry. Once you show the ability to deploy and sustain large portions of the combat force you will have achieved the exercise criteria. But in order to prove the NRF concept the exercise is going to have to look at the preparation plans, the activation process, that is activating the forces that are needed for this particular crisis, and the scenario is a crisis operation. There is what's called in the military "notice to move timelines." This is giving the forces advance notice of when they are supposed to depart and when they're supposed to be in theatre. And it's very important in terms of the individual units in collecting the logistics they need. These notice to move orders are very important and this exercise will test all the force as to how they can adhere to these timelines. There's also deployment procedures, sequence events. You don't want the force to arrive all at one time. You want it to arrive in sequence, depending on the scenario. Of course, Command and Control. And it's all going to culminate in a show of force or a demonstration which some of you are going to see. In terms of the scenario, as I mentioned, it is a crisis operation. It is using a semi-fictitious group of islands, Cape Verde, but the name Cape Verde will not be involved. In these group of islands there are four countries that have rivalries, tensions, including ethnic tension, and disputes over natural resources, which has culminated in the UN requesting a deterrent military force, hence the use of the NRF. And the NRF would be there in this particular case to deploy as a bridge for perhaps a follow-on force, or as a simple show of unity and force and resolve by the NATO Alliance. And when you get there you'll be given background briefings more on the scenario, but I thought I'd give you a brief overview of that. The Steadfast Jaguar has actually been under way since the 1st of June. Pre-deployment ended on the 1st of June. The actual deployment started on the 1st of June until the 14th. We are now obviously in the LIVEX section which is between the 15th of June and the 28th of June. That's when all the activities are scheduled. And then from the 29th of June until the 12th of July there's redeployment. And then following that there'll be an evaluation phase where the lessons learned and all the reports come in from all the various units, plus all the people... the exercise folks that are overseeing this and marking and testing, if you will. That evaluation process will take us through to the end of July. So what will happen? What will you see on the ground? In terms of the demonstration that will take place, I think it's on the 20... APPATHURAI: Twenty-second. WHITE: Twenty-second, an area has been chosen in the Cape Verde islands where a reconnaissance will start with AWACS aircraft and maritime patrol aircraft. There'll be an assault by Special Operating Forces, or SOF forces on a contentious location. There'll be close air support so you'll see fighter aircraft. They'll have to simulate naval air gunfire, as you can imagine. We're not going to need live fire. There'll be an amphibious assault. There'll be an helicopter assault on a second location. There'll be a land assault using forces that there's an airfield. And then the operation will involve linking the amphibious forces linking up with the land forces. And the purpose, according to the scenario, is a show of force. Is showing that NATO is capable of bringing in all these assets in very short order, with some of the highest level of technology and robustness as a deterrent to the factions. A little bit about Cape Verde. We have received excellent host nation support from the CapeVerdeans. The CapeVerdean military is involved in this exercise and has been working with the NATO soldiers from the onset. There are a number of good mutual benefits and I think you'll learn about that when you get there, but the navy will do some underwater survey of some of their coastline, because there are some concerns about long-term maritime traffic and the more we understand about the area surrounding the islands the better they can protect their own natural resources. And there's obviously the training aspect for the small, but very eager CapeVerdean defence force. This is a joint and combined exercise. When I say joint there's the army, navy and air force. So we have a land component commander, we have a maritime component commander and we have an air component commander. And I'm not going to bore you with the Command and Control, but if you consider SACEUR as being at the top of the food chain, Commander JFC Brunssum is the operational commander. He delegates his authority to a deployable joint task force, which will be on the USS Mount Whitney, which is a Command and Control ship off the coast. So in this case, because there is an amphibious aspect to this, the Command and Control of the exercise will be done offshore. They will have a small, what we call land-based unit as well, but for the most part the exercise and the direction from the exercise commander will be done at sea. And he will be directing the maritime forces, the land forces and the air forces. And the special operating forces. I'll go in just a little bit of detail. The number of troops, as I said, approximately 7000. There's about 500 that are working in the deployed Joint Task Force Headquarters. The maritime forces are over 2500 because there are aircraft carriers, there are at least six frigates, there are two submarines. And what I would suggest to you is that you... when you get your briefings you'll get the actual numbers and the nations involved, and it's better for you to do it there because there could have been changes in the last little while. But in addition to the frigates and the submarines there's auxiliary ships, there's supply ships and there's maritime patrol aircraft. That's just on the maritime front. The land component, which also has a large number of troops, 1800, will feature three battle groups, as well as engineering companies, medical task force, CIMIC and other military police units. The air component will involve air movements, ground handling team, airlift, fighter aircraft, recce aircraft, medevac aircraft, AWACS. There are three UAVs, which are uninhabited vehicles or pilotless drone aircraft. And of course, there's a logistics group. As you can imagine, there's going to be a fair number of logistics. The total is around 7000. There are other agencies that are going to be there. The United Nations Development Program, the Cape Verde Red Cross, the United Nations Population Fund, UNICEF and of course Cape Verdean government authorities. That in a nutshell is the exercise. I think in terms of the significance of it, as I said, the largest exercise that the NRF has undertaken. This will be a building block for us, as we work towards full operational capability of the NRF. And I think you're in for what will prove to be a very interesting demonstration. APPATHURAI: Questions. One, two, three, four, five. Start here. Q: Just one simple question, is this the first ever NATO-led exercise on African soil? APPATHURAI: I think it's the first NATO exercise on African soil. WHITE: Yes, it is. I can't think of any... Q: As a follow-up, do I understand it right that it's first exercise neither on a member country's soil, nor on a partnership? APPATHURAI: That's an interesting question. It's all how we define it, because NATO has participated in exercises in the context, for example, of... WHITE: I mean, NATO forces, especially maritime forces, operate all over the world. APPATHURAI: Exactly. WHITE: I... I would prefer to characterize it as the first time we've operated in... Q: And the second one, will... for Cape Verde, well, I presume it's not only on so to say charity grounds when they provide their soil. They get some money for this... how it works? WHITE: I'm not aware of any financial dealings. All I'm aware of is that we have offered them... they volunteered... there were a number of places where we did reconnaissance to find out a suitable location. And the CapeVerdeans volunteered. Certainly over the course of this exercise they will have benefited from the experience of working with one of the world's most advanced militaries and there are going to be surveys done of their coastal waters. We're also going to lend our expertise when it comes to CIMIC, which is Civilian-Military Co-operation. They have the opportunity to meet the Secretary General and if there's... APPATHURAI: That's worth it. WHITE: There you go. I'm sure if they have any aspirations and if they want... they're going to have the opportunity to... Q: I mean, environmental, whatever. It should be somehow compensated. APPATHURAI: Of course. First of all, every effort is being made to minimize the environmental damage and that includes, for example, sonar, all the areas where there are endangered species, of course, have been walled off to our forces and radar will be passive radar, sonar, so that's the first point. Second, and this is a basic philosophy, NATO includes to leave Cape Verde at least as good as we found it, in at least as good shape as we found it, and that means rebuilding anything that might be broken, taking away anything that we might have brought with us. And of course, if anything needs to be repaired the necessary and appropriate financial arrangements have been put in place. But I think as Tony said, the key point to go away from this is, the reason it's happening there is because Cape Verde, which has traditionally had an interest in good relations with NATO, continues to have that interest and NATO approached several countries that had the opportunity or that were appropriate for hosting this kind of exercise in terms of terrain, in terms of strategic distance, and Cape Verde volunteered to do it, so they didn't ask for any money. They did it simply because they wished to continue and are continuing a good relationship with NATO. I think we had a question here with Nick. Q: Yeah, clarification first, and then a couple of questions. Is it correct that the EUROCORPS is commanding the land component... WHITE: That's correct. Q: ...because... well that sounds like a week earlier than the rotation. WHITE: EUROCORPS is part of the NRF rotation schedule. EUROCORPS is the land component commander and they start their first six months... actually they will hand over... you're right, they will hand over to... I'm trying to remember who the next... I can get that for you after the briefing. But they are on the rotation that was scheduled. Q: Oh, they're at the end of their rotation. It's not the beginning of their... okay then I... WHITE: Yes. That's the end of the rotation, yes. It's the six month. Q: Okay. Right. I thought it was the beginning for some reason. And then the U.K. just announced that they're going to provide extra forces in the NRF. I don't know if it's this rotation, but how far does that bring, you know, filling in the gaps? WHITE: Well, I'm not in a good position to tell you the exact makeup of the NRF. I know that there have been a number of nations that have come forward with some contributions and I understand that the Brits have offered, and as I understand it, at SHAPE it's being discussed exactly what this offer is and how it will fit into the force. And some offers are for the current or the next rotation. Some offers are for several years down the road. But I believe the British offer is for the next rotation. But I'll... NRF-7 and NRF-8. Q: Okay. This is NRF-6 then still. WHITE: Right. The tail end. Q: And then on the logistics aspects, I mean that's one of the areas where there have been shortages in the past. Now I know that some ships left a couple of months ago already, to transport stuff, is that the... WHITE: First of June was when we did actual deployment started. There may have been some ships that left earlier, but the main deployment started on the 1st of June. Q:I guess most of the heavy equipment is being sent by ship. How much air transport is there going to be? Has it been leased or is it national? WHITE: Most of it is national. A lot of the heavy equipment was taken by ship, and what they've been doing over the last several weeks is building the infrastructure they need to operate... the land forces, more specifically. Of course the amphibious forces are off the coast and ready to go. But airlift was a key component of that. I don't have all the details on what the deployment airlift was. But I can certainly find that out for you. Q: And then the close air support, is that going to be done off of... well, which carriers are we talking about or are there... WHITE: There's a Spanish aircraft carrier with six Harrier jets. They're going to provide close air support. Q: So no airfields are going to be set up... WHITE: No, not to my knowledge. It's strictly carrier-based aircraft. Q: And transportation, no Ukrainians, no Russians? WHITE: I’m not aware of... I didn't see the pre-deployment airlift, and that airlift would have obviously gone back and it'll come back for the re-deployment. I'd have to chase that up. I just don't know. Q: Yeah, I got a couple of kind of practical questions and then a more political one. In terms of the practicalities, what's going to... the demonstration that we're going to see down there, you mentioned that it's going to be the high point of the exercise, if you like, the culmination. What's going to happen after that? I mean... WHITE: Well there are other scenarios that will test other aspects. I'd have to go back to the scenario in more detail and they're going to explain this to you, but there's going to be other, what we call scenarios, put into the exercise. I believe there's going to be a volcanic eruption, there's going to be... APPATHURAI: Not a real one. Q: There was an earthquake on Saturday. WHITE: But there are strictly military, but the predominant scenario is the UN asked for a deterrent force to stop this crisis from opening up into a wider conflict, which is exactly what the NRF is designed to do. The NRF can be used as a standalone, ready to go in five days for a 30-day deployment, as a bridge for follow-on forces, or it can be used, in this case, as a show of force. If the show of force didn't work, and more forces were required, the NRF provides that bridge to allow other forces to come in that can be sustained a lot longer. Traditionally the NRF is only sustainable for 30 days. Q: Okay, SecGen's going down, I think, tomorrow, is he, and SACEUR is this the only VIP visit down there? Are there... there was some sort, at one point, like African leaders coming along to watch it. APPATHURAI: In fact, the Secretary General is first going to Stavanger to the Joint Warfare Centre with SACEUR and SACT and me as a second level participate. And the entire North Atlantic Council. At that point the whole Council, plus all of these fellows, except SACT, will be going down to Cape Verde. So you will see a high level of representation from NATO. Is CMC going? WHITE: Yes. APPATHURAI: Okay, and the Chairman of the Military Committee. There will also be representation by regional countries, and representation from lusophone countries, Portuguese-speaking countries. So there will be... and I don't know at what level and I don't think that that's yet a hundred percent nailed down, so you'll get that when you get there. But certainly participation from neighbouring countries, participation from political level participation from neighbouring and lusophone countries. Q: Thursday's the big day for all that. APPATHURAI: Thursday's the big day. Well, there's a media day and then there's a DV-Day, the Distinguished Visitor, Distinguished Visitor Day, which will be the 23rd. Q: Now my political question. The CapeVerdean government has said that it sees this exercise as a step forward in its aspirations to draw closer to defence organizations like NATO. There's been talk about some sort of special status for Cape Verde and also that it could be a strategic advantage to NATO to have a base in that region given the talk about defending energy supplies and maritime routes and stuff like this. Where is that going? APPATHURAI: I have heard the same... I've seen reporting of the same interest on the part of the CapeVerdean government. And I'm sure, or I would not be surprised if it were to come up in the discussions between the Secretary General and the Prime Minister and other members of the political leadership. That, ok course, remains to be seen. There will be a press conference after the Secretary General meets the Prime Minister. So it may well come up in that context. I can tell you that there have been no formal political discussions in NATO about creating a structural relationship between NATO and Cape Verde. We do have a good and open political dialogue which is only made deeper by the practical cooperation over this exercise. So I think the time to ask that question may be after the exercise. But to be frank, I don't anticipate in the immediate future a structural relationship between NATO and Cape Verde. That's the first point. Second point is there are no NATO bases anywhere, so I don't anticipate that the first one would be in Cape Verde. And finally, I would suggest that the discussion, as you know, on energy security has barely begun in NATO and certainly no one has made any link to Cape Verde or any other geographic area in that regard. So I don't think we should put the cart ahead of the horses on this. Q: The press conference will be with the Prime Minister? APPATHURAI: With the Prime Minister. Q: When we're down there on this... APPATHURAI: Yes. Yes. Q: Okay. Q: Yeah, I'd like you, if possible, to be a bit more specific on scenarios and the description of the kind of threat. I mean, would it be a conventional troops, rebels, would they be equipped with boats if possible? WHITE: The scenario in broad terms involves tensions between the four countries, each of which has its own militant forces or forces that are increasingly engaged in what appears to be an emerging crisis. And... but it's at the stage where all that is required is a show of force. At this stage of the scenario there isn't a need to engage in combat. But as I said, the NRF is being sent down as a show of force. Although the scenario is not likely to go beyond that, but if it did the NRF is designed to hold the ground and prepare for a larger deployment of NATO forces that can be sustained over a longer period of time. So to get the details you'd need to get the scenario briefing, but I believe that they are warring factions. They have been engaged in military operations against each other, albeit at fairly low level. This is not all out... the package that's going in here, although formidable, 7000 all together, in terms of the actual combat operations it's significantly less than that. Of course, a force of this size requires a huge amount of logistics, so you're going to see several types of helicopters, several types of jets, and several hundred land forces, including amphibious forces. But the scenario does not dictate entry level combat operations. Q: One of the main points of the NRF is that it can be deployed in a few days notice, and I'm wondering, how can this specific rapid-reaction characteristic be seriously tested when after all we've known about it for months. WHITE: Yeah. You're quite right, and obviously it's very difficult to create an actual world crisis without actually creating one. The NRF does have five days notice to move. The forces are postured in that way. The leadership, I agree with you, the leadership of the various deployable headquarters are fully aware of probably the scope of the exercise, but the actual units themselves, down to the soldiers, the airmen and the sailors, are not as familiar. And you still have to go through the process of briefing your troops as to what... where they're going and what they're getting engaged in. And so there is some reality to it, but it is extremely difficult to plan an operation involving 7000 troops without people involved in the exercise knowing. But I can tell you also too that the exercise people will spring other types of scenarios on them to see how quickly they can react on the go. While they know what their primary mission is, a force of this kind obviously can offer humanitarian assistance, it can offer disaster relief, there are several other capabilities such as engineering battalions. There are explosive ordinance people. And I'm quite certain they'll be given last minute notice to move to engage in some other type of scenario, which will tax the whole Command and Control and therefore exercise the ability of the force to work in several concurrent ways. Q: But I think any kind of a genuine alarm type drill, as some international emergency services operate, that's kind of unfeasible in this sort of situation or... WHITE: Yeah, you're right. Some of the things are going to surprise them, but the main purpose of the deployment... but it's a certification of the training that they've undergone and that's what's most important, and I can tell you, having been exercised myself in previous life, we gain a lot of experience from ACT because ACT has developed a very robust exercise schedule and also a lessons learned, so that we really do test our people and where there's mistakes we learn from them. APPATHURAI: I can add two things. One is obviously, it goes without saying, you can't drop 7000 people in to someone else's country and give them five days notice. That's point one. That's the real world. The second point is, of course, that many of the elements of the NRF have had their very short notice to move tested after the earthquake in Pakistan and met that standard. So I think it's fair to mention that they've actually done it in real life. Q: Yes, is NATO going to organize an exercise every six month for each rotation? WHITE: Not at this scale, but the NRF has been exercising in smaller exercises continuously since it was first adopted. Yes,. not of the same size, but yes, the exercise schedule continues on and they're often not as joint as this one so every year you'll have three or four maritime-type exercises. There'll be air exercises. But this scale, I'm not sure when we will attempt to do this again. And it could be that at the lessons learned there may be a requirement to do such., this because of what we learned and what we need to work on. APPATHURAI: If I can add just one thing to that. I think it's worth noting, two points. One is, full operational capability is not just about force generation. It's about for the first time testing the systems and structures on which all future rotations will be based, in terms of Command and Control, in terms of logistics, in terms of the ways in which they've been trained. So this is testing for the first time things that don't need to be tested each and every single time. Because they work or they don't work and you tweak it to make it work. But once that skeleton has been put in place then it simply becomes a question of force generation. But this is about testing the skeleton to make sure it's strong and can do the job that you need it to do. The second thing I just thought for interest might be worth mentioning is the way in which forces are brought into this, because the first step is national forces are brought up to the NATO standard in their own national systems. These are forces that are going to move into the NRF in future. So they're prepared, first step, in the capital. They're brought up to standard. Then they're brought together to train together, to have a new level of jointness. Then they're on standby for the six-month rotation of the NRF, and then they go back to their national forces. So in fact, it's not just a six-month issue for any forces that are committed to the NRF. There's a number of stages that they go through in and then out again, to be brought together to be able to work. Just to give you an idea of how it all works in national systems. Q: Several questions. One is, is this live ammunition exercise or at least part of it? Secondly, in terms of environmental damage, how bad will it be? WHITE: Okay, there will be very limited use of live fire. I do know that some of the ground forces have already been training with the CapeVerdeans actually, in live fire exercises in a build-up to this exercise. But in terms of the scenario there's no need for obviously anything, you know, beyond small arms. And the small arms will be done in designated areas and tightly controlled. But it's the show of force, the fighter aircraft. It'll be explained to you how the ships offshore would be providing cover for the troops on the ground, what helicopters would be used to do medevac and what are used for special operation forces. But the short answer, very little live fire. And as James pointed out, NATO has a very high standard, environmental standard, when it comes to exercising and there are people specifically responsible for checking to make sure that they put Cape Verde back the way they found it. APPATHURAI: Or better. WHITE: Or better. APPATHURAI: I think Paul was... Q: I've got a couple of questions. The first one is, what will be the role of the CapeVerdean soldiers in this? Are they going to be the bad guys in the scenario? WHITE: No, no. They're going to assist with marshalling duties, because you can imagine that these forces are going to be transiting different parts of the islands and moving back and forth and the CapeVerdeans obviously have a great knowledge of their own homeland and they will assist NATO in marshalling and the routing of these inter-theatre deployments. As well as other duties. APPATHURAI: There'll be about a hundred, is that right? WHITE: Yes. Q: The other thing is Cape Verde has become a transit point for both illegal immigration and illicit drug shipments into Europe. If the NATO naval vessels and maritime patrol planes etcetera, see anything like that, are they going to intervene? WHITE: No, I mean, we're working with the CapeVerdean authorities and they'll be notified as soon as there is any indication of anything that is domestically related to their own security. And obviously we hope to run the exercise with as little impact as possible, providing whatever mutual benefit we can to the government of Cape Verde. And if there are incidents that we see or experience we'll certainly let the authorities know. And there are these... although there are a hundred CapeVerdean military personnel with NATO personnel, there are other authorities associated and we're in close communication with them. APPATHURAI: If I could just add to that, because you're quite right, but of course every nation in NATO has signed up to the Law of the Sea and any obligations contained therein they will meet. But they will meet them on a national basis, based on their national contributions. Q: As I know Russians are invited as observers. How many other partnership nations are invited? And in future, or in theory or maybe in practice, is the participation of partner countries envisaged in NRF? WHITE: I don't have the exact numbers of observers, but it is standard practice for NATO to offer access to our partners to be able to witness these exercises, understand the Command and Control that we use, and I know that there are a number of observers. I'll try to find out how many there are, and I'll give you my card afterwards. In terms of the NRF and the... including the partnership countries, that's something that's being discussed, but it's not, in this particular exercise there are no partner countries directly involved. APPATHURAI: Any other NRF questions? Aha, I know Nick wouldn't let me down. Q: Sorry, maybe I shouldn't be asking this here, but the... who's providing the air component command and the... WHITE: Ramstein is. Q: And the naval component is that the Spanish maritime force. WHITE: It is the Spanish. Q: And then what is the heaviest equipment actually being brought along? I mean, I know that... WHITE: An aircraft carrier and... Q: Yeah, I mean, obviously, but EUROCORPS people told me it was very unlikely that they're going to take heavy howitzers... WHITE: Some mechanized equipment will be brought, but obviously the NRF is a robust force, but in this particular case when you have to move very quickly there isn't the time to bring heavy equipment. They'll have enough to make their camps. They'll have vehicles to be able to protect them and offer transportation, but nothing of that scale. But the NRF does have that in its inventory and in another scenario it may be necessary, but not on this one. Q: So I mean, it's likely to be mainly light armoured vehicles. WHITE: Light armoured vehicles. Q: And wheeled, not tracked. WHITE: Right. Q: And then you spoke about three... was it three battle groups you WHITE: Yes, three battle groups. Q: Who's providing that? The (inaudible)... WHITE: I have it on my list. Why don't you come and see me afterwards, I have it on my list. Q: All right. Q: Can you just confirm it's NRF-6 doing this exercise. Then that's the one which is now, in NRF. WHITE: Right. Q: What would happen if a real crisis emerges and they'll all on an exercise? WHITE: (Laughs)... The, you know, I mean, there are still large components of the NRF-6 that are still available to be used. And I would say that in the event of a real world crisis... APPATHURAI: The exercise would be over. WHITE: Right. Often, I've experienced exercises that have been cancelled because of a real world situation and we obviously would discontinue if it was that important. Q: So this Ramstein, Spain and the EUROCORPS that's NRF-6 then. WHITE: That's right. Q: Okay, and can you give us an idea of are there any countries which are outstanding in the contribution of forces to this exercise? WHITE: I know that 25 nations within NATO are involved. I can tell you that some of the biggest contributors are Germany, I believe Italy. I have some numbers here that might help you out with that. But this is the NRF... those units that were not tested in the Pakistan deployment, or the concepts that are being tested now, so we didn't necessarily leave out countries simply because it was just the way the scenario was, this is exactly the package they needed. And that's exactly what the NRF is about. It's about a high-readiness force involving many countries. Task tailored. You don't need to use... we hope we never have to use the NRF. The point is is that you can task tailor certain functions out of the NRF and use it in a humanitarian or in this kind of scenario. So, and the countries themselves rotate in and out of this. So it's a very fluid and dynamic force. I would say that it's extremely transformational because the ability... even some nations can't provide this high readiness force with this joint. So it is an incredible undertaking to pull together assets from various different countries and bring them together to a point where they're interoperable enough to be able to go off in five days and do the full spectrum of operations. So... but in terms of the numbers, I think I have some in my briefing here that I can provide afterwards. WHITE: Iceland. APPATHURAI: Iceland. No forces. Q: How the theatre was chosen. It's uninhabited terrain or there are some villages and towns? WHITE: I think... are you going? Because I think it looks very austere. It looks very barren. I can assure you that the location of the demonstration is in an uninhabited valley and there's not a lot of... there's certainly... I didn't see any infrastructure and I didn't see a lot of foliage or any other things that could be... we went to great lengths to find a location where we could do this without any impact on the environment, or as little impact as possible. Q: This is going to involve a lot of young men away from home on a tropical island for a long time. Are there any special instructions, regulations that go out to limit their interaction with the local population? WHITE: all NATO forces do cultural awareness prior to deployment. They're briefed on where they're going, the language, the culture, and obviously it's all part of Command and Control in terms of ensuring that good order and discipline. I can also tell you that they haven't had much time to do anything but build their camps and get ready. So I'm not aware of any incidents, whatever, but it is a standard NATO practice to prepare our troops and to respect the country that they're in, both on duty and off duty. Q: But do they have... I mean, will they be able to go (inaudible)... WHITE: I think, yes, some of them... some of the pre-deployed forces will have had a chance to visit, but there's not a lot of time for that. They may be a little bit upset about that, but... that's life. Q: It's only sun and sea on crisis response. (LAUGHTER) Q: James, you talked about protecting endangered species from the sonars of... You said they would wall off the area or... how do you do that? APPATHURAI: Well, just to be clear, there are zones where NATO ships will not go to ensure that they don't harm endangered species that are in these protected areas. And the sonar that is being used is passive sonar. In other words, they're not pinging out something which might throw off, for example, the radar of whales. They will simply be receptive to movement in a passive way, so as to ensure that whales are not in any way confused. WHITE: The navies around the world are pouring a lot of research into the use of sonars and how that affects mammals, sea mammals, and every effort is made to minimize it. Some navies have advanced sonars that actually have proven not to affect, so it is an issue and we're fully aware of it, and there are areas in and among the islands that the CapeVerdeans have asked us not to go and that's exactly what we're going to do. We're going to avoid those areas where they're most concerned about their sea mammals. Q: Can you give us some details on the evacuation of the island, you're going to do an evacuation the last day because a volcano erupts and will you really evacuate the population? Or what? WHITE: No, we'll do as much as we can and probably simulate the actual evacuation. In other words, we'll train our forces to be able to work with the CapeVerdean authorities, to marshal those people that are in need of evacuation, and provide them through the CapeVerdean authorities, medical care. But in terms of actually moving CapeVerdeans off the island, no, we won't be doing that. APPATHURAI: If I can just add. This is one of the benefits that I think the CapeVerdeans will get from this, because what NATO is going to offer to them is NATO's expertise in civil emergency planning, which as you can imagine, is relatively well developed in NATO countries. So it'll be an opportunity to share best practices. But I think the hope is that some of that best practice will be of value to the CapeVerdeans. Q: Are you on the record or is this on background or are you both on background? APPATHURAI: I'll be on background too. No problem. If... I'm going to touch on three things in three minutes and then open up the floor to you because I don't have that much new to tell you. One is just to give you a quick snapshot of the Secretary General's trip to Canada, and in particular Iceland, which I think might be of interest to some of you. The Canada trip, the focus of the discussion was, as you might imagine, twofold. One was the Riga Summit and all the elements of transformation. We can go into that if you want, but of course the main focus was Afghanistan. Canada is heavily engaged in the south and they discussed, of course, the security situation in the south. They discussed how we will go forward with Stage 3 and Stage 4. What you heard, I think, fromt he political leaders in Canada was certainly a firm commitment to stay through 2009. The Canadian government in its press appearances made it clear that Canada would like to take command of ISAF in. or after 2008 and the Secretary General certainly said he saw no objective reason why that wouldn't be the case, but of course there's a larger political and military discussion that has to take place about the command of this operation. So that will follow. Iceland. Again, two points of discussions. One was Riga, but as you will not be surprised, the Icelandic government wishes to discuss with the Secretary General their bilateral discussions, the Icelandic-U.S. bilateral discussions on the U.S. decision to adjust its defence cooperation agreement with the Icelanders. In particular with regard to air defence. The Icelandic Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, I think they had both been in their jobs for about 12 hours when we arrived, but they updated the Secretary General on the bilateral talks that they'd had with the United States. The Secretary General encouraged the bilateral talks to continue and certainly hoped that they would come quickly to a mutually satisfactory resolution. He also offered himself, offered to play a role in that the two parties could call on him as NATO Secretary General in their bilateral talks if they felt that that would be a help in coming to a resolution. Happy to take questions on any of these issues, if you have any. Finally, let me just mention the AWACS. This may not be of any surprise to you, but as you know NATO is providing AWACS for the World Cup, additional low level coverage and radar relay. Obviously it is a German lead at all times, but from the 7th of June till 9 July both of the NATO AWACS force components, that is, what's based in Geilenkirchen and what's based in the United Kingdom, will be carrying out their missions from their operating bases from those two bases respectively. Interesting little statistics, NATO AWACS has done this type of mission for more than 30 events, including the Winter Olympic Games, the pope's visit to Poland a few days ago, and has flown more than 3000 hours in these missions. That was all I wanted to say, except to say that tomorrow, as I mentioned, the Secretary General and the entire North Atlantic Council are going to Stavanger, which is where we have our Joint Warfare Centre, one of the three, if you wish, educational facilities of the Alliance; one in Rome, one in Bavaria and this one in Norway. The Joint Warfare Centre is a bit more down at the practical level than the other two, which are a bit more academic. The Joint Warfare Centre is a bit more at the pointy end where we get down to practicalities. Once a year Allied Command Transformation, which as you remember used to be the Atlantic Command, now focuses on modernizing the Alliance, has this closed door seminar with the ambassadors and the Secretary General to discuss the hard nuts of transformation. They will certainly discuss the NATO Response Force, how to make sure that in pot the funding for the NRF is made available. Particularly for short-notice deployments, air deployments, because what we want to ensure as an Alliance is that there is no disincentive to the commitment of forces to future rotations of the NRF because of unpredictable cost. So they want to make the costs a bit more predictable, a bit more fairly balanced and they were there to discuss how to do that. And other elements of transformation with which you are all familiar. And will be discussed behind closed doors and I'm not at liberty to go into the details, so there's no point to my continuing this particular line of thought. Let me therefore stop and on this or any other issue, Afghanistan, Kosovo, anything else that you might want to ask, I'm at your disposal until 4:10. Please. Q: Yeah, you said earlier that discussion had begun on energy security within NATO. How far has it gone? Could you be a bit more specific? APPATHURAI: Not very far. I can certainly be specific. It hasn't gone too far. It has begun, in an informal way. And that means that ambassadors have had discussions, but not discussion that required decision. So simply exchanges of views. But of course with developed military thought as well, plugged into it, in terms of the practicalities of what NATO could or could not do. The next pragmatic step will be a conference that the Secretary General will host in September in London. The exactly date has yet to be worked out, but which will focus on energy security. It will have a series of high level speakers, and it will talk not just about energy security, but where NATO can add value. So this will be the next, I think milestone in that discussion. I can't give you anymore details because it just changed again yesterday. So, you know, it's not firmed and signed up. But when it happens I have, and I've mentioned this before, I've ensured that there's not only room for journalists, but room for journalists to be participants and if possible panellists as well. So as soon as I know I'll let you know because you know, you can spend the whole day and be fully part of the discussions and it'll be on the record. So I think it'll be an interesting event. Just to put this into the proper framework, what NATO is looking at is, again, where NATO can add value. And that is not to duplicate discussions in the EU about pipeline security or discussions with Gazprom about assurance of supply of gas to Europe. That's not, I think, where NATO... the direction in which NATO is going. I think things like protection of critical infrastructure of sea lanes in times of crisis, seems to be the direction in which the Alliance is going. For example, sorry, I've used this example before, but there are, in essence, virtual pipelines of liquid natural gas on the oceans. One comes into Tokyo every eight hours to keep the lights burning. That's one example. But this is repeated all over the world. These are potentially vulnerable transmission lines of energy and since NATO has this naval multinational military naval expertise, which you can see being used every day, for example, in the Mediterranean, there is the possibility, and I say it's nothing more than that, that NATO could conceive of adding value in that way. But that discussion has not taken place in any sort of structured way within NATO yet. Sorry, long answer to a short question. Q: Were there discussions in Iceland on air policing, how... APPATHURAI: Well, in essence, that was what I meant by the U.S.-Iceland bilateral discussions. The Secretary General said to the Icelandic government, the Icelandic government agreed fully, that the track to be pursued is the bilateral track and that is, to modernize, adapt the arrangement that the United States has with Iceland for its overall air requirements. Because of course, it goes beyond issues like air policing or air defence, but to overall air sovereignty in a sense. And of course, this relationship is changing. But the United States has made it clear that they want to have an enduring commitment to Iceland in this regard, but just in a different way than in the past. So the Secretary General, as I said, has encouraged the two parties to come to a bilateral agreement, and if they need him they can call on him, as part of these bilateral discussions. Q: Keflavik might be closed as a permanent U.S. base, but there is the possibility the U.S. would return or rotate in and out to do air policing, itself, I suppose. APPATHURAI: Well, again, let's leave that to the parties. The United States has just named a lead negotiator on this. I can't remember his name, but they've named a lead negotiator. For the moment there is no NATO role here, and so we want to leave the discussion with the relevant parties for the moment. Q: Yes, one more. (inaudible)... I'm a little bit confused about how the Secretary General and the NAC are going to be there at the same time we are, if they're going to be in Stavanger tomorrow and how long are they going to stay... APPATHURAI: Because we're flying overnight. Well, I'm not sure we're flying overnight. But we're flying there, and we'll get there when you're there. Q: And how long are they going to be there? APPATHURAI: They will be there on the 22nd and 23rd. Q: The NAC arrives with the Secretary General... APPATHURAI: The NAC will arrive separately. The Secretary General and SACEUR are going ahead to do the political discussions that they need to have with the Prime Minister etcetera. And the NAC is coming from Stavenger, switching planes and then coming on their own. But they're coming straight too. It's just we're on a slightly faster plane. That's the only difference. APPATHURAI: We're not on Hercules. Q: On energy security, this conference in London, it will be there there will be some ideas on what NATO can do. APPATHURAI: Yes. Q: And after that they'll work on how to do it? I mean, when can one expect NATO to be doing something? APPATHURAI: Well, that's a very good question and obviously I'm not in any position to say when or even if NATO will do something. What... how to put this? Energy security is a sexy subject and everybody is engaged in it in one way or the other. I can tell you the Secretary General, and I think the Council too, don't simply want to rush to be part of an issue unless NATO can add value. So the first thing is to have this discussion to see if NATO has a role. And if NATO has a role what can it be? So the conference, I think, will be very important. Riga will be another milestone, but I can't say that Riga will be a place where they take decisions on this issue. They may not wish to take decisions at all. Do I don't want to lean out in any way forward on this. Q: Follow-up to this question. You said the Secretary General would host this conference in London? APPATHURAI: Yeah. Q: Why is that? One would think that if they really wanted to discuss it they would discuss it in the NAC, put it officially on the table and say what can we do? So why this sort of deviated way of doing things? (inaudible)...some in conference... APPATHURAI: Well, I have... Well, I wouldn't call it deviated. Q: Well it's... APPATHURAI: It's one way of gathering information and sharing views, not just with each other, but of course with industry experts, with academic experts, to have exchanges of views with people outside of NATO who can add to our knowledge of the issue. While of course NAC discussions are extremely edifying on pot issues where expertise might be required, a conference is a good way to gather it. So that's why. I mean, for example, I know that the Secretary General is looking at inviting the top level management of one or more petroleum companies to give their expertise on what they consider to be the major security challenges that they face. It would take months and months to do that through the NAC. It's better to do it all in a conference. Q: RUSI has just sent out invitations to a conference involving Aznar and SACEUR. This is not the same thing. APPATHURAI: Separate. Separate. Separate. Q: On NRF funding you said they were going to discuss this in Stavanger. I understand this exercise is going to be made with common funding... APPATHURAI: The existing arrangements for funding will apply to Cape Verde. (SPEAKERS OVERLAP) Q: The one in Cape Verde is common funding. APPATHURAI: No no no, the existing arrangements for funding apply, which means the vast, vast, vast majority will be costs like where they fall, and... Q: And transport is common funding? WHITE: As far as I'm aware it's costs like where they fall. I can go and ask if there are any aspects of the exercise deployment that may have come under, but to my knowledge the exercise is being funded under the existing agreement. Q: So costs like where they fall. WHITE: Right. Q: (inaudible)... APPATHURAI: No idea, and frankly it would be hard to determine because each individual nation is going to pay its part. Sorry, each individual nation is going to pay its part, so I'm not sure... sorry, and just to finish that discussion. A) it would be hard to add up the cost. B.) it's incremental cost. For example, the forces that would be exercising anyway, how much more would this cost on top of what they would already be doing? I say this as a former defence official, that trying to find out what this kind of thing costs is impossible. And I can tell you, and I say this totally off the record now, that all those books you pull off the shelf that tell you what things cost or how much people are spending on their defence, I wouldn't trust it, because I came up with those figures, by the way. Anyway, I don't think it's possible to determine. But it's included in the normal defence budgets of each and all of the contributing nations. So there's nothing unusual about it. It'll be paid for like every other exercise that comes out of every defence budget on a...