by Paul Ames
BRUSSELS, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The new top man at NATO
is a politician renowned for working and playing hard. To relax, Anders Fogh
Rasmussen likes nothing better than to cycle up some of the toughest peaks in
the French Alps.
In his first day of the office, the secretary general
set himself some new mountains to climb.
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New NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh
Rasmussen addresses his first press conference at NATO headquarters in
Brussels, Belgium on Aug. 3, 2009. Rasmussen began his first day work on
Monday. Rasmussen's tenure officially started on Aug. 1.(Xinhua/Wu
Wei)
Photo
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By time his mandate ends fours years from now, he
wants Afghan forces to have assumed "lead responsibility" for security in most
of the country. They will have to take over from the 90,000 international troops
who have just suffered their bloodiest month in eight years of trying to pacify
the country in the face of ferocious Taliban opposition.
Rasmussen insisted that target did not mean that NATO
troops would be making a "run for the exit" that would abandon the Afghans to
their fate.
"We will support the Afghan people for as long as it
takes," the former Danish prime minister insisted in his debut press conference
at NATO headquarters.
Rasmussen said his second priority would be building
a "true strategic relationship" with Russia whose relations with NATO have yet
to recover from the Georgian war a year ago.
He also wants to improve the security situation in
Kosovo to the point where NATO can terminate or at least significantly scale
down its mission and develop closer ties with Arab nations on NATO's southern
flank, a task complicated by his role in the furor that erupted in the Muslim
world following the publication of caricatures of the Islamic prophet Muhammad
in a Danish newspaper in 2005.
Rasmussen must also prepare a major overhaul of the
strategic concept underpinning the 60-year-old alliance by late 2010.
Afghanistan, however, remains his toughest challenge.
Rasmussen suggested NATO would be following the example set by the Americans in
Iraq, working province by province to gradually hand over prime responsibility
for security to Afghan forces.
For the Afghan National Army and police to be able to
take charge of a majority of the country's 34 provinces by the time Rasmussen's
mandate ends in 2012, NATO and other international players will have to
significantly step up their training schemes for local security forces, he said.
As the first former prime minister to hold the
alliance's top job, Rasmussen is expected to pull more weight than his
predecessor in persuading other European leaders to boost their contributions to
the Afghan mission.
The United States currently provides almost half the
64,000 troops serving with NATO's International Security Assistance Force as
well as around 30,000 American military personnel operating independently of the
NATO command.
The fact that the bulk of the frontline fighting in
the south and east of the country has been left to troops from the United States
and a small group of allies, including Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and
Denmark, while those from countries such as Germany, Turkey and Italy have
remained in the relatively peaceful north and west has long rankled within the
alliance.
Rasmussen was adamant that allies on both sides of
the Atlantic will do their part in the push to build up Afghan forces. By
putting the emphasis on the need for training teams for the Afghans, he aimed to
appeal to those nations reticent about sending more combat troops.
He also emphasized the role of NATO in supporting
human rights and in particular women's rights in Afghanistan -- an appeal to
opinion in countries such as Germany where the public is less convinced by
NATO's argument that the mission is crucial for European security by preventing
Afghanistan from becoming again "the Grand Central Station of international
terrorism."
Rasmussen's replacement of former Dutch foreign
minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as NATO secretary general is the latest step in a
sweeping change of the guard at the alliance.
In recent weeks, U.S. President Barack Obama has
appointed Adm. James Stavridis as supreme allied commander operations and placed
Gen. Stanley McChrystal at the head of international troops in Afghanistan in an
effort to inject new life into the campaign to defeat the insurgents led by the
Taliban.
Breaking with tradition, French Gen. Stephane Abrial
was confirmed last week as the first non-American to hold the post of supreme
commander transformation, in charge of modernizing the alliance military. His
appointment underscores France's increased engagement in NATO under President
Nicolas Sarkozy.
The first test of the new team will come with the
Afghan presidential elections scheduled for Aug. 20. Despite a major push
against the Taliban heartlands in southern Afghanistan, NATO officials admit
privately that as many as one seventh of the 7,000polling stations may not be
secure against insurgents who have vowed to disrupt voting. Rasmussen insists
that making sure the country can hold "credible" elections is crucial for the
NATO mission.
On Russia, Rasmussen wants to put profound
differences over issues like Georgia on the backburner and focus on areas where
the two sides can get along such as counter-terrorism, fighting nuclear
proliferation and Afghanistan.
His words offered scant encouragement for pro-Western
leaders in Ukraine and Georgia, whose efforts to join NATO are strongly opposed
by Moscow. NATO has committed itself to taking in both countries one day.
Rasmussen said, however, the question remains "hypothetical" while neither
country meets the criteria for membership.
A drive to develop warmer ties with Russia could be
derailed by NATO plans to adopt a new strategic concept at a summit expected to
be held in Lisbon in November next year.
The Baltic Sstates and other new NATO members in
Eastern Europe are worried about Russia's more assertive foreign policy and
concerned that the expected focus on new threats ranging from failed states to
international terrorism could undermine the alliance's core function for
collective territorial defense. In the light of Russia's invasion of Georgia
last year, they want commitment to defense planning that strengthens Article 5
of the alliance's founding treaty, stating that an attack on any of the 28
member nations will be considered an attack on all.
Rasmussen announced he had set up a group of experts
in diplomacy and defense, headed by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright to help produce a draft of the new strategic concept and said he would
hold a series of "town hall" meetings to exchange views with the public around
NATO nations about the future shape of the alliance.
NATO leaders agreed at the alliance's 60th
anniversary summit in April 2009 to overhaul the strategic concept which was
last revised in 1999.
Other members of the 12-strong experts' group include
Jeroen van der Veer, a former chief executive officer of the oil company Royal
Dutch Shell; former British defense secretary Geoff Hoon; and former Polish
foreign minister Adam Rotfeld.
Rasmussen also invited the public to offer their
advice on the strategic concept over the Internet, saying he wanted the debate
to be the "most open and most inclusive" to be held on NATO's future. However,
the final document will be shaped by member governments in negotiations running
up to the Lisbon summit.
The new concept will aim to create a more flexible
alliance able to handle multifaceted dangers, from terrorism and cyber-attacks,
to threats to energy security and even environmental disasters. However,
Rasmussen said he understood the worries of NATO's new members and insisted
there is no contradiction between preparing for new threats while maintaining
the all-for-one-one-for-all pledge of mutual defense at alliance's
core.
