Paris, 25 March 2004: The Assembly’s Political, Defence, Technological and Aerospace, and Parliamentary and Public Relations Committees visited NATO and SHAPE Headquarters in Brussels and Mons on 23-24 March for briefings by high-ranking NATO officials and SHAPE military representatives and for a discussion with DSACEUR Admiral Feist. The annual joint meeting with the NATO Permanent Council concluded two days of briefings and discussions focusing mainly on NATO’s current and future operations, member states’ military capabilities, NATO transformation, EU-NATO relations and NATO’s relationships with non-member states.

The Assembly is the only interparliamentary body which has regular meetings with the three security policy decision-making bodies of NATO, the EU and WEU (for more details about the meeting with the EU’s PSC/WEU Ambassadors, see PR 2/2004 of 27 January).

Council Chairman Minuto Rizzo, standing in for Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer who attended the state funeral in Madrid for the victims of the 11 March terrorist attacks, told national parliamentarians that they played a crucial role in shaping security policy. He asked for their continued support when it came to voting national defence budgets and urged them to persevere in their efforts to raise awareness among the general public of the importance of security issues.

Assembly President Armand De Decker (Belgium, Liberal Group) welcomed the “spectacular and increasingly rapid transformation of NATO following changes in the security environment”. Responding to questions from Ambassadors about the future coexistence of NATO’s Article 5, Article V of the WEU modified Brussels Treaty and the solidarity clause in the draft EU Constitutional Treaty, he said that one of the essential principles of WEU’s collective defence agreement was the formal link with NATO through Article IV of the modified Brussels Treaty. The draft EU Constitutional Treaty merely stated that NATO, for those states which were members of it, remained the foundation of their collective defence. He recalled that when the Brussels Treaty had been concluded in 1948, US President Truman had called Belgian Foreign Minister Henri Spaak to announce that the US government was now ready to join Europeans in a transatlantic defence initiative, which resulted in the founding of NATO.

The WEU collective defence commitment was automatic and included the use of military means. It was to be hoped that the EU Constitution which, if all went well might be adopted during the Irish EU Presidency, would not only make provision for member states to choose to engage in permanent structured cooperation in the field of security and defence but would also contain an automatic and unconditional mutual defence clause. In that case Mr De Decker did not exclude the possibility of WEU member states proposing to denounce the modified Brussels Treaty. However, before that could be done, it was necessary to safeguard proper interparliamentary scrutiny of the European Security and Defence Policy. Information and consultation rights for the European Parliament could never be sufficient for that purpose in view of the specific responsibilities the national parliaments had for the ESDP. Mr De Decker explained that national parliamentarians alone carried the responsibility for voting defence budgets and agreeing to the deployment of troops for operations abroad.

The NATO officials and SHAPE military representatives who briefed the parliamentarians on current NATO operations insisted that NATO’s first priority was Afghanistan where the objective was to provide a secure environment for the elections scheduled to be held later this year. A continued NATO presence was necessary in the Balkans. Recent events in Kosovo had made it unlikely that troop numbers could be reduced soon. Whereas it had proved difficult on other occasions to generate the necessary forces, member states had this time responded quickly and according to pre-planned reserve force arrangements. Preparations for terminating the SFOR Operation, which was to be followed by a combined EU military and police mission, were under way. However, NATO’s political engagement in Bosnia and Herzegovina would continue and a headquarters would remain there with a view to the country’s possible participation in the Partnership for Peace programme. NATO would soon be extending its Article 5 naval surveillance operation in the Mediterranean, whose purpose was to detect and deter terrorist activities. This was important as NATO was thinking about harmonising its Mediterranean dialogue with US President Bush’s Greater Middle East initiative.

A number of parliamentarians wanted to know whether NATO vessels − currently confined to the coastal waters of member states − were actually patrolling those areas in which terrorist operations could be prevented or effectively intercepted. Others questioned the validity of the underlying principle of NATO’s operation in Kosovo and called for a rethink of the policy of ethnic cohabitation. They also had doubts about the willingness of governments to arrest war criminals. Referring to Afghanistan, they criticised the fact that opium production was increasing rapidly and called for more efforts to put a stop to it. NATO officials admitted that NATO was “wrestling” with the drug problem. But NATO was only one actor in Afghanistan and its role was to provide security. It was up to the international community to deal with the other issues. The same was true in the Balkans where NATO was operating alongside UNMIK. Bringing war criminals to justice was still a priority for NATO and a necessary condition for “getting to grips” with the terrible events during the Balkan wars.

On the issue of capabilities NATO officials said that parliamentarians’ support was indispensable for meeting capability goals. They asked them to make sure that savings made through the restructuring of national armed forces were not reabsorbed by general expenditure but made available for new capabilities. In the future, member states would be involved in more NATO operations. They would be under pressure to ensure greater interoperability and to engage in more defence reforms.