Paris, 3 June, 2004 – German Defence Minister Peter Struck said on Thursday that the modified Brussels Treaty should not be denounced until the EU’s Constitutional Treaty had been ratified because otherwise there would be a security policy vacuum. Replying to a question from Beata Brestenska (Slovak Republic) about the future of WEU and its Assembly, Mr Struck said that before a decision on WEU, its founding Treaty and the Assembly’s future could be taken, the member governments would have to wait until the Constitutional Treaty had been ratified because that would change the legal situation. Mrs Brestenska had stated that for the new EU and NATO member states such as Slovakia, parliamentary work in the Assembly was extremely important. Her own country had even expressed a wish to accede without delay to WEU’s Treaty. In his reply, the Minister recognised the importance of the Assembly’s work for the new member states. In recent talks with the incoming Dutch Presidency it had been agreed that the Assembly should pursue its activities throughout the period required for ratification of the EU’s Constitution. He estimated that governments would continue to work with the Assembly for another three to four years.
 
Addressing the WEU Assembly, he said that the European Union must “continue to build its security capacity without duplicating NATO”. There must be “greater European cooperation in developing, procuring and maintaining systems as well as in training”, he asserted. The EU had not yet become a full-scale global security player but was increasingly becoming a strategic partner of the United States and NATO. It was not a counterweight to the US. It was more a question of burden-sharing and responsibility-sharing between partners with common fundamental interests. There was no alternative to acting in partnership. However, it was important to discuss where countries thought their vital interests lay, how to deal with perceived risks and threats and what priority should be given to the use of force - in other words how to remedy global security problems.
 
Outlining Germany’s current armed forces’ reform, designed to prepare them more effectively for the missions in which they were most likely to be involved, the Minister said an ability to act rapidly and interoperably with the forces of other nations were essential. Under the reform there would be three levels of forces - short-term intervention for peacemaking (35,000 troops), medium-term stabilisation (70,000 troops) and long-term support (145,000 troops).
 
Referring to the current debate in Germany about conscription, the Minister said he was against the idea of turning the German army into a professional force, mainly because of the cost. The present system of a mix of conscripts, professional soldiers and reservists would guarantee a high level of professionalism as well as the armed forces’ integration in society. The system of conscription was a key component of Germany’s democratic tradition. However, for the time being the Bundestag had refused to allow conscripts to be deployed regularly for international crisis management missions.
 
Since 1998, some 120,000 soldiers had taken part in multinational operations; 7,900 were currently engaged in seven different missions being conducted in three continents; with its 2,000 troops in Afghanistan, Germany was making the biggest contribution to the ISAF. It was necessary to further extend ISAF’s presence from Kabul into the provinces and more Provincial Reconstruction Teams were needed. The Minister announced that German and Dutch forces were discussing how to set up a PRT in Pol-e-Khomri in the Baghlan province.
 
Turning to Iraq, the Minister said that under the current circumstances no German forces would be sent to Iraq. He also refused to envisage a role for NATO in Iraq when he said “in military terms there is nothing NATO could achieve that the coalition forces could not achieve on their own”. Defending Germany’s opposition to the war in Iraq and the sovereign right of nations to take their own decisions on such momentous issues, he noted that while the United States was capable of winning wars on its own, it had realised in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq that it needed Europeans to help with the “nation-building” that followed. He added that the US Administration was now prepared to negotiate with the EU on an equal footing, which had not been the case before the Iraq conflict.
 
On the future European Defence Agency, Mr Struck said its primary role would be to coordinate European defence equipment procurement. Although the role of non-EU European countries in the agency had yet to be clarified, he believed these nations would eventually be drawn into its activities. But he thought it would be very difficult for the agency to promote cooperation between Europeans and Americans in developing new defence systems. German defence industry executives regularly complained that it was virtually impossible to penetrate the US defence market.