 |
U.S. Ambassador Victoria Nuland signs a letter of intent for nations supporting the NATO-Ukraine Joint Working Group. (NATO photo)
|
25 July 2006
NATO Focused on Afghanistan, Exporting Training, U.S. Envoy Says, July 25, 2006(Ambassador Nuland also discusses Kosovo, possible Middle East training center)
By Vince Crawley
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- Afghanistan is a top priority for NATO and is expected to dominate the alliance’s November summit in Latvia, says Victoria Nuland, U.S. ambassador to NATO, who also discussed Kosovo peace talks and possible new training centers for the Middle East.
“On the military operations side, missions one, two, three through six are Afghanistan,” Nuland said in a recent Washington File interview in Brussels, Belgium. She added that Afghanistan not only is important strategically, but is also a testing ground for efficient multinational cooperation.
During the interview, which took place in mid-July, Nuland discussed the U.S. goals for the November NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, which is aimed at setting a “transformation” agenda to help the 26-nation alliance better undertake its new global missions. (See related article.)
Visiting Afghanistan on July 20-21, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that the country needs more international attention, adding there can be no lasting security without development.
“I think the attention of the international community could be higher than it is at the moment,” de Hoop Scheffer said. “A high level of political attention is absolutely essential.”
NATO troops are deployed along a 8,000-kilometer arc from the Darfur region of Sudan to Afghanistan. In October 2005, NATO troops and aircraft rushed to Pakistan to assist in rescue and humanitarian operations following the Central Asian earthquake.
“So today, we are far from the Cold War alliance that never fired a shot, never left the barracks,” Nuland said in her interview. “We are branching out globally.”
The interview took place before international diplomats began discussing the possibility of NATO participation in a multinational force in Lebanon. (See related article.)
However, Nuland said NATO is paying more attention to North Africa and the Middle East. The agenda at the Riga summit may include an initiative to open a “NATO Middle East cooperation center” that would train military and civilian officials of nations in the Mediterranean region, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. “We don’t have consensus on that yet, but there’s a lot of discussion,” the ambassador said.
NATO currently hosts a multinational training facility in southern Germany. Two nations in the Middle East have expressed interest in hosting a similar training facility, she said. In addition to the Middle East center, the alliance is considering a possible training facility in sub-Saharan Africa.
NATO always has focused on its own forces and the forces of its partner nations, Nuland said. Now the alliance is looking for ways to export its training capabilities to promote security.
“Increasingly, we’re finding that security training is a ticket to nations being able to take care of more of their own problems rather than needing heavy NATO deployments,” she said. “And it’s also the exit strategy for parts of the world where we’re already deployed.”
NATO will soon start contributing to the training of the Afghan National Army. And the Darfur mission – though it included an airlift element – is “fundamentally … a training effort,” Nuland said.
NATO is in charge of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, and in the summer of 2006 it is augmenting its troop strength from under 10,000 to about 15,000 as it is expanding its presence into the southern part of the country. (See related article.)
Such a significant expansion so far from NATO home countries requires sophisticated teamwork and cooperation, Nuland said.
The allies are trying to combine and coordinate their forces into multinational teams that include common funding, she said, adding that the goal is to provide “a strong security umbrella for all of the development and all of the Afghan government authority.”
The influx of NATO forces is “obviously causing the bad guys grief,” Nuland said. But it’s also “very important that NATO performs well and gives the Afghan people and the Afghan government and the international community a lot of confidence,” she said.
Afghanistan is a “manifestly better” place due to the international security presence, she said. The country has a “democratically elected government, new constitution, men and women voting and working as equals,” Nuland said, adding that despite ongoing violence, large parts of the country remain peaceful.
In the Balkans, NATO forces have strengthened their capabilities in recent months to provide security during the Kosovo future-status talks. The Kosovo province of Serbia has been administered by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO drove out Serb military forces following human-rights abuses. The United Nations is sponsoring talks to determine whether Kosovo will gain independence or remain an autonomous part of Serbia. (See related article.)
“In the short term, it’s very important that we provide the security to ensure that the parties can keep negotiating in good faith,” Nuland said. From the U.S. perspective, she added, “if Kosovars aspire to independence, that would be incompatible with a long-term permanent security protectorate status.” The alliance, according to Nuland, should prepare for a situation when “Kosovo can manage its own internal security in a manner that gives confidence to all Kosovars – Kosovar Albanians and Kosovar Serbs.”
Over time, she said, “we would look for some sort of a mentoring role for NATO in whatever emerges from the talks.”
For additional information, see Southeast Europe and South and Central Asia.
