Press point

by NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer
and José Antonio Alonso Suárez, Minister of Defence of Spain

Alonso Suárez: (Speaking in Spanish)...

De Hoop Scheffer: Thank you very much, Minister. Thank you José. And let me start by thanking you for the great hospitality we are enjoying in Spain. And in the beautiful city of Sevilla. Thank you so much, so much indeed.

And a second remark I should make, and you did that yourself, that is, that this is an important year because it's 25 years, 2007, since Spain joined the Alliance. And I think I'm not exaggerating when I say that since Spain entered, up till this very day, Spain has been and still is what we call in correct English, a staunch and reliable ally in NATO.

A NATO which has, as we speak, and that's of course also the central theme for the informal Ministers' meeting, Defence Ministers' meeting, has over 50,000 men and women in uniform, what we would call overseas, in the different crisis response operations. Of which the most challenging and the most important, as we speak, of course, is Afghanistan where almost 35,000 soldiers are on the ground in what is an important and challenging operation. And in that operation we do see an active and very important Spanish contribution.

The same goes for the second subject Ministers will discuss this afternoon;  in fact the major operations, Afghanistan and Kosovo. No need to explain to you that Kosovo is important because the important proposals by Finnish President Ahtisaari have been tabled, and Ministers will discuss that as well.

Ministers will also certainly discuss what we call transformation. Easier said, how can NATO adapt to the present-day challenges: terrorism as a global phenomenon—and Spain has been the victim of terrorism, of horrible consequences of terrorism. Failed and failing states—the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And ministers are certainly going to address these themes as well.

That is the reason that we are here. It is not a meeting where you can expect decisions. It's an informal meeting because we want to intensify the political consultations between Defence Ministers and it is crystal clear that as we speak for NATO its operations and missions are extremely important and that will be the focal point.

And given the fact, let me end where I started, that Spain plays an important role and contributes in an important way to those crises in peacekeeping operations, I think there's more than some justification, José, that we host it here in Spain and host it here in Sevilla.

Thank you very much.

Questions and answers

Q: Yeah, Mr. Secretary General, realizing that this is not a force generation conference, and no important decisions made, what political signals or political commitments do you expect? Which allies are deploying more forces to the southeast in Afghanistan and generally (inaudible) the fight against (inaudible)?

De Hoop Scheffer: You say in the first part of your question it's not a force generation conference, and in the rest of your question you're making it into one, so let me repeat my statement that it is not. At the same time, it is, of course, important to underline if we discuss Afghanistan that we need what we call the so-called comprehensive approach. There is no final military answer for Afghanistan. Afghanistan needs development, needs reconstruction, needs nation-building.

So the final answer is rather civilian than military, but we need our military to make that work. Because without security and stability there's no development. By the way, the opposite is also true.

In other words, the Commander ISAF needs the forces to make that comprehensive approach a reality, and I think quite honestly, as we speak, we're doing quite well.

But to underline again, force generation is a continuous process in NATO. It's not, we have a ministerial, so we're going to generate the forces. We generate those forces on a permanent basis. And we've made good progress in that regard.