Paris, 18 December 2006 – The WEU Assembly came out on Monday in favour of revitalising the strategic partnership between NATO and the European Union, in particular, by setting up a “transatlantic forum for discussion” in which all participating countries take part on an equal basis, so as to widen the debate to include “security issues that do not necessarily require a military response”.

Charles Goerens (Luxembourg, Liberal Group), presenting a report entitled “NATO: transformation and strategic partnership with the EU” on behalf of the Political Committee, expressed the view that “the spectre of rivalry and differences of opinion” that often reared its head between the two organisations was in fact a “false problem”, since most EU countries were NATO members. He also stated that there was significant scope for moving forward towards complementarity in crisis prevention, monitoring and management.

Observing that, in recent years, the United States attitude as regards the ESDP had fundamentally shifted towards one of greater respect, the Rapporteur called for more advantage to be taken of these warmer relations and greater use made of potentialities that were not being sufficiently exploited. Describing working relations between ambassadors to both organisations as being “at their lowest ebb”, he called for “double-hatting” of ambassadors representing the member states of both and for strategic dialogue to be widened on all levels.

In the same pragmatic vein, the Assembly recommended seeking “to obtain the participation of US police forces in the ESDP police mission in Kosovo as a first step towards regular US involvement in ESDP civilian missions”.

Invited by the Assembly, Zoltan Nagy, representing the NATO Secretary General, gave an account of the recent Alliance Summit in Riga. He hoped that relations between NATO and the EU would improve, pointing out that it was widely recognised that there were “too many threats in today’s world […] to be dealt with by any single country or organisation”, stressing the usefulness of machinery allowing the two organisations to work together as effectively as possible.

“The NATO Response Force has now reached full operational capability”, Mr Nagy said, adding that the Alliance now had a capable force which could be deployed even outside the Euro-Atlantic area. He also welcomed the lifting of caveats (national restrictions on the use of force), on the grounds that this would facilitate NATO led security missions.

Mr Nagy reminded the Assembly that, in Riga, NATO had adopted a new framework document, “a Comprehensive Political Guide”, setting out Alliance priorities in terms of capabilities, planning and intelligence for the next 10 years – adding that current developments could lead NATO to adopt “a new strategic concept” by 2008-2009.