Press Conference

by Jonas Gahr Støre, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer

Informal meeting of the North Atlantic Council at the level of Foreign Ministers

MODERATOR: Welcome to... all of you to this first press conference, to give a few introductory remarks to all of you about the meeting and the day. I'll give the floor to the host Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, and then to the Secretary General and we'll also have time to take a few questions afterwards.

Please, Minister Støre.

JONAS GAHR STØRE (Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister): Yes, thank you. I've had the pleasure formally to welcome the Secretary General of NATO to Oslo and to say how happy we are as a member state to be able to host NATO for the first time since 1992 we are in Oslo. At that time there were 16 allies coming to Oslo. Today there are 26, 10 more and even more for partnership discussions, which is another telling example of how NATO has changed.

I also told the Secretary General that had we been here for about 18, 20 years ago we would have had a focus on the high north of Norway from a very special perspective, namely that that would be the epicentre of the conflict between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, between the Soviet Union and the West.

Today that is not the case, and that is something that we welcome because their development has gone in a very positive direction. Norway is expanding its cooperation with Russia and the high north is emerging as a different region, associated with energy, transport, management of resources, climate change.

So it's also an opportunity for Norway to point at this region as a region of strategic interest for the Alliance. Our membership in NATO is still critically important for the way we balance our relations with our neighbours and take care of our security interests. I hope we will have two good days of discussions in Oslo and I have the opportunity now, with the Secretary General, to touch on a number of those issues. And under his able leadership I look forward to those discussions in the North Atlantic Council, in our NATO-Russia Council, and tonight we will be together with our EU partners to discuss a number of other political issues.

So Jaap, welcome.

JAAP DE HOOP SCHEFFER (Secretary General of NATO): Minister Støre, Jonas, first of all, thanks very for the hospitality we enjoy in Oslo today and tomorrow, and apologies to the people of Oslo for the traffic jams we create.

It's good to be here. We have, I think, a fairly charged agenda. You know it's an informal meeting, so do not expect any formal decisions. We have a charged agenda. This afternoon we'll meet first of all in the North Atlantic Council at 26 where we will certainly have an interesting discussion on what is our number one priority—Afghanistan. Think about issues and items like coordination, the state of play on NATO's presence there, the functioning of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams and a lot of other issues.

And the second issue this afternoon is missile defence. As you know on the 19th of April there was a successful meeting in  Brussels at the expert level, the so-called reinforced meeting of the North Atlantic Council, and as important, a reinforced meeting of the NATO-Russia Council.

And the NATO family will discuss missile defence. But then in the sphere of openness and transparency, which I think is necessary and justified, given the fact that the Russians are our friends and partners, Minister Sergey Lavrov will come and in the NATO-Russia Council we'll not only discuss the upcoming tenth anniversary of the NATO-Russian Founding Act, the fifth anniversary of the NATO-Russia Council for which the North Atlantic Council will travel to Moscow later this year in June, but certainly also missile defence.

Well, you know that as we speak Russia and the NATO allies do not entirely see eye-to-eye. Is that a problem? No, that's not a problem. That is an argument to continue in openness and transparency the discussion.

Tonight Minister Støre will host, as he said, the Transatlantic Dinner where Javier Solana and I will be the guests of the NATO and EU Foreign Ministers.

Tomorrow morning we'll have a second session of the North Atlantic Council where we'll certainly discuss Kosovo, where as you know 16,000 NATO men and women in uniform are still creating a climate of stability and security in these important weeks now the Security Council is debating the future of the province. I met with the Security Council yesterday in Brussels. They're now on an information trip to the region, where they visited Pristina, Belgrade and Vienna.

Ministers will also, tomorrow morning, have a very first and initial discussion and that is an initial preparation of the summit in 2008 next year, on the state of play in relationship to the nations in the Western Balkans who have our Membership Action Plan in the framework of the summit next year and future—I say future without giving a time and a moment—future NATO enlargement.

Finally, important to note we'll have a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission in the presence of the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Yatsenyuk tomorrow morning. Not, of course, to discuss, because that is not a subject for the NATO-Ukraine Commission,  the present debate inside Ukraine, but to discuss our important relationship, Ukraine's participation in more than one NATO crisis response operation.

Our cooperation in the sphere of reforms in Ukraine and that is at the moment to see where we are in the relationship between NATO and Ukraine.

That, in brief, is the agenda. Fairly charged, as you'll agree with me, and...