News conference

by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at the Informal meeting of NATO Defence Ministers and the Meeting of the NATO-Russia Councilnswers

JAMES APPATHURAI (Spokesman, NATO): Questions

Q: Jim Nuger(?) from Bloomberg. You spoke of the need for a shared vision over how to use the Response Force. Could you lay out for us what your vision is, how many countries share it and what discussion was there today over possibly using it in Afghanistan.

JAAP DE HOOP SCHEFFER (Secretary General of NATO): I will not enter into details, because that would harm a process of an informal and confidential discussion Ministers had. The fact that there was a discussion on the NRF means that subjects like these are on the table. But this is not a meeting where you leave the room with consensus or no consensus, because this is an ongoing process in Brussels. It's discussed in the Military Committee. It will continue to be discussed in the Military Committee.

There were, by the way, introductions by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Craddock. The Dutch Defence Minister Kamp had produced a food-for- thought-paper on the future of the NRF, and I think it was very useful because Ministers are for giving us guidance, giving me guidance, giving the people who work in NATO Headquarters guidance on the NRF.

So many elements were discussed. I mentioned a few—the way we generate our forces, the way we can better assure that we have a good force generation process, the relationship between the NRF and our reserve forces has been discussed. You know about the discussion, which is not new, about answering the question, when and under what circumstances do we use the NRF? But again, I'm not going into details, because I'm not going to, of course, communicate to you the positions the nations took. They are mature enough to tell it to you themselves. And I think they'll not do that because the discussion is going on in Brussels, but you can give it a try.

APPATHURAI: Next question.

Q: Mr. Secretary, you said you'd touch briefly on the Iranian issue with...

APPATHURAI: Could you identify yourself?

Q: Arik Bahran(?), Maariv Daily, Israel. You've discussed briefly the Iranian issue with the Russian Minister. What is your sense of the Russian approach. Everybody assumes that Russia would not like to have an Iranian... nuclear Iran on its border. So do they know anything none of us knows?

DE HOOP SCHEFFER: Well, about the Russian approach I think you should question my friend Sergey Ivanov and not me. But it was clear, because the Russian Minister spoke on the subject, that there is a widely shared belief that this is not only a complicated, but also a potentially dangerous situation. But that's all I'm going to say, because if you want to hear the position Minister Ivanov took he'll, I think, brief you in a few moments. So let me leave that to him.

That's... NATO allies, I said, I think we discussed that yesterday, although NATO does not have the intention to play a direct role. There is, of course, anxiety about the developments in Iran and on the Iranian threats, that's crystal clear.

Q: Yes, Gerard Gaudin, Belgium News Agency. But coming back to the use of the NRF, there was already an agreement in the past, how to use it, when to use it, and would it open the debate again?

DE HOOP SCHEFFER: No, there's not a debate on the agreement. There is on the different missions of the NRF. As you know, full operational capability means that the NRF can have all its missions and there are quite a few of them, but there is a feeling that we need a wider discussion to assure A) a secure longer-term force generation for the NRF, and you also have the situation where the medium-sized and smaller nations every time have to make a choice—are we going to commit in an NRF rotation, are we going to participate in an operation, am I, Defence Minister of Country X or Y going to use my scarce funds to invest in my own defence, in equipment or what have you.

So there are a number of elements which are relevant. I mentioned one of them, the relationship between what we have in the NRF and the reserve forces NATO has, is a topic and is an important issue we should discuss.

But I add immediately, that does not mean, of course, that in a morning's discussion, informal discussion in Sevilla, there's immediately a consensus on all these themes. But I think, and I consider it my responsibility as Secretary General, to raise these issues, because it is our most important tool. It is for many nations expensive. I want a guarantee and I want to be secure that in all those NRF rotations we have generated the right forces, and if I talk, and if we talk about longer-term force generations nations come up with questions.

So that is the debate, but don't conclude from my remarks and from our discussion this morning that there are doubts about the concept as such, or that there are doubts about the NRF not being able to fulfil its missions. It can, but we need, I think, to keep the NRF under permanent review.

APPATHURAI: Next question's here. Please.

Q: Martinez de Rituerto with El País. A question in relation with Kosovo. Minister Ivanov, before entering the meeting spoke about the opening of the Pandora box if the proposal...

DE HOOP SCHEFFER: Sounds familiar.

Q:Yeah. And today we've heard that the President of Slovakia has said more or less the same, and it's probably the first time that someone in his rank and position in our side, the  western side, speaks against the Ahtisaari's plan. What would you reply to Ivanov's ideas if he is playing the same misgivings in the meeting? Thank you.

DE HOOP SCHEFFER: Well as far as the allies were concerned, because you're right, and we could read it in the wire stories about Minister Ivanov's position. I go back with you to what we discussed yesterday, when the 26 Allies discussed Kosovo. I have not seen any deviation in our discussions, but I can't speak for others, and I will not speak for others, but here in Sevilla, the Defence Ministers, but I can add the Foreign Ministers in Brussels three weeks ago, that there is full support for President Ahtisaari's proposals and there's support for the timelines. I mean, there were a number of Ministers who said can we see any plus or positive effect to further delay?

So I think the position, as I've indicated publicly over the past weeks, as far as the allies are concerned, has not changed. But I'm speaking about a Foreign Ministers' meeting and about the Defence Ministers' meeting here in Sevilla. And I cannot speak or comment or react to what others say and from their responsibility. I speak on behalf of the Allies as they have met in Brussels and here.

APPATHURAI: There's questions here.

Q: Amir Oren of Ha'aretz in Israel. Secretary General, on earlier occasions in conferences and speeches you mentioned fighting terrorism as one of the priorities, which NATO has. Do you have an agreed definition of terrorism and do you have a list of organizations which, according to your view, constitute terror organizations. Is Hezbollah one of them? Is Hamas? And not only global jihad,  al-Qaeda and so on and so forth.

DE HOOP SCHEFFER: We in NATO, we, first of all, you know as well as I do that internationally there is one could say, unfortunately, no agreed definition of the notion of terrorism.

If that is the conclusion you and I can draw, I cannot go and sit around the tables endlessly with allies to see let's first see if we can agree on a definition of terrorism before we act. We are in Afghanistan. We have Operation Active Endeavour, so NATO can do its work very well indeed in its operations and missions in the fight against terrorism.

Operation Active Endeavour was specifically launched after 9/11, an Article 5 operation, to show NATO's solidarity and participation in the fight against terrorism. One of the important reasons we are in Afghanistan is that Afghanistan, in the view of the NATO allies, is a front line in the fight against terrorism. We are there to support the Afghan government. We are there to fight those people who would like to see Afghanistan to be a training ground for terrorists again, as Afghanistan was on the Taliban.

So I must say, and answer you, that in the daily work of NATO we are not hampered by a lack of unanimity in the world, in the United States, about the definition of the word terrorism. So I do not consider this as a specific problem for NATO. Nor do I consider a discussion in the NATO framework about organizations necessary because it doesn't harm our operations and missions.

APPATHURAI: Last question. There.

Q: Mr. Secretary General, this is Mustafa Samih, Middle East News Agency of Egypt. Of course, as you know, that there's still sort of misunderstanding or unclear idea about the object, the objective of the dialogue between the Mediterranean countries, although we have clarified that in our writings. But still, people are asking, is there any possibilities that you may ask for facilities, say bases for the NATO inside the countries of the Mediterranean Dialogue?

DE HOOP SCHEFFER: No.

Q: Well... well...

DE HOOP SCHEFFER: No.

Q: Well, if there will be sort of training would that be training of specific forces or so?

DE HOOP SCHEFFER: Listen, training can take place in many forms. Training can be that we have, if they so wish, military people, officers from Mediterranean Dialogue partner countries in the NATO Defence College in Rome, you know. We are going to launch a faculty focused on the basis of the Riga Training Initiative, we're going to open a faculty in the NATO Defence College I Rome, specifically focussed on the area. And we hope very much that from the area in that faculty there will be a lot of added value.

There should be, that's my key word also in this Mediterranean Dialogue, there should be added value in this dialogue for all of us. For our partners in the Mediterranean Dialogue, but certainly also for NATO. It's not only NATO coming and asking those nations, oh here we are, what can we teach you? That would be a very unbalanced approach. It is value-added from all sides. But if the question would be, in this regard, NATO bases, it's difficult to define a NATO base. We have NATO bases in Europe, but I don't now of many NATO bases elsewhere, and it's certainly not the intention of creating NATO bases.

By the way, every Mediterranean Dialogue partner will decide for itself to what extent it wants the cooperation, but in the forms of cooperation I've mentioned, I see an interest. Let me also say, because that's how you started, because you're writing the articles, what is the importance of the luncheon we're going to have in a moment? Building trust and confident. Building trust and confidence. That was the key theme of my travels through the region. That's the key theme when the Deputy Secretary General Ambassador Minuto Rizzo travels very frequently through the region. Building confidence and trust. But no NATO bases. No.