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Ladies and Gentlemen
I should like to start by welcoming all of you to Oberammergau. Thetown is familiar to many of you, but the facilities we are using todayare new. This year's PfP Symposium is the first event to be held in theimproved NATO School, and we are most grateful to our hosts for theirhospitality.
But the facilities are not the only new aspect of this meeting.This is the first symposium organised under my supervision as ASG forPolitical Affairs and Security Policy. And I am grateful to the stafffor all their hard work in arranging it. I am also very grateful to youfor leaving your desks in your capitals and in Brussels and cominghere. There are a lot of you –which is excellent to see - but this willrequire you to show organisational discipline in order to keep to theschedule. But you also represent the best minds involved in Partnershipmatters. And if we are to achieve the objective of a substantive butinformal debate, then we need your minds to be undisciplined and freedof bureaucratic routine. I am sure you will live up to the challenge ofdisciplined bodies and undisciplined minds.
Ladies and Gentlemen
The decisions taken at the NATO Summits in Prague and Istanbul havechanged Partnership. We now have clear guidance from our leaders on itsobjectives and priorities. We have given it a truly politicaldimension. We have complemented our traditional focus oninteroperability with the focus on defence reform. We have paid dueattention to Partners in the Caucasus and Central Asia. And we haveconstructed more efficient and more comprehensive mechanisms ofcooperation. In summary, I believe that we have achieved a lot in arelatively short period, but more remains to be done.
Oberammergau has always been a source of new ideas. Many times,informal remarks made here have inspired Nations and evolved intoofficial policies approved by their Heads of States. This meeting isour first chance since the Istanbul Summit to informally reflect on itsresults and on how to improve our efforts to implement them.
Since Prague, we have been putting increasing emphasis on defencereform, as part of our larger effort to support democratictransformation across the Euro-Atlantic area. We have launched twomajor initiatives to support it - IPAP and PAP-DIB, but we still needto see their fruits. We have moved PARP to the centre of defence reformand Partnership itself. But we have not yet tested it in this new roleand need to measure our progress carefully. We also need to make surethat other PfP instruments are well tuned to serve our priorities.Paradoxically - as our tasks become more complex - our instruments needto become simpler and more user-friendly. Outside of this room you willfind exhibits on how the new improved PRIME, developed by our Swissfriends, can help this happen.
I am sure that you will agree with me when I say that it is easy totalk about reform - but it is very difficult to carry it out. Partnersneed help in undertaking reform and in dealing with its consequences.In a perfect world, this help would be well tailored to each Partner’sindividual needs, and well co-ordinated. In the real world, there is alot to improve in both respects. We have been disappointed with the PfPClearing House mechanism. But with what do we replace it? Is search foreffective and co-ordinated assistance to individual Partners an elusivequest? I hope not, and hope you will tell me why.
I think you would agree that education is crucial for the successof Partnership. But do we have what it takes to support our priorities?Do we have the means to help prepare civil servants and militaryleaders to launch, support, and manage change in their defenceestablishments? We do have TEEP and PfP Training Centres, but they weredevised to serve military interoperability. We have the NATO DefenceCollege in Rome, the NATO School here, and the Consortium of DefenceAcademies, but do their curricula and student profiles match thepriorities agreed in Istanbul? Do we need a new momentum, a newinitiative? I will welcome your views on that too. And as you reflecton this, you will be supported by the "marketplace" organised by theConsortium of Defence Academies and Security Studies Institutes which Iam sure you have already spotted. I invite you to learn about theConsortium, as it may be instrumental in taking our education agendaforward.
However, defence reform is not a replacement for interoperability atthe core of Partnership. The two go together, and will be the essentialparts of Partnership. The interoperability business is not finished. Itwill never be - as we have to constantly look for ways to developPartner's capabilities to keep in step with those of NATO. But thenature of interoperability is changing: as our Partnership matures, itis about more than a mere ability to work together - it is about theability of Partners to provide high-value, essential contributions toNATO-led operations. We need to see how these contributions can beenhanced and what NATO should do to facilitate this change. We willdevote the second day of our meeting to this question.
Finally - a word on combating terrorism. We are not here to addressthis issue directly. However, whatever we do in reforming our defenceand security systems and in developing modern military capabilities,will have a positive impact on our ability to counter terrorism. In amonth, in Lugano, the EAPC community will reflect in detail on thisissue. We hope that the Lugano Conference will become a turning pointin the implementation of PAP-T and I encourage Allies and Partners tomake maximum use of it.
In summary, change is on the way. NATO is a moving train andPartnership must keep on track with it. We need to focus our work onthe three priorities identified at Istanbul: defence reform,operational capabilities, and counter-terrorism. And these threepriorities should be served by a renewed effort in education andtraining. In such a way, we shall ensure that Partnership, which willbe increasingly focused on regions of strategic importance to us, willbe more relevant than ever before.