Paris, 23 March 2005. – NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, presiding over the annual meeting between the Assembly’s Committees and the North Atlantic Council (NAC) on 21 March 2005 at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, said that there was no contradiction between a strong EU and a strong NATO and that NATO supported a strong EU. He suggested developing and extending the relationship between the two organisations.

Assembly President Goris underlined the importance of the regular dialogue between national parliamentarians and the North Atlantic Council. Close cooperation with NATO was one of the cornerstones of the modified Brussels Treaty. The Assembly was the only parliamentary institution having regular meetings with the government representatives of both NATO and WEU/EU (see also Press Release 3/2005 dated 16 March 2005). President Goris regretted that it had not been possible to include a general provision on EU/NATO cooperation in the European Constitutional Treaty. Such cooperation was currently based on ‘Berlin plus’ which was a confidential arrangement covering only the specific area of crisis management.
 

Commenting on current NATO operations, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer explained that NATO was preparing for important events in the coming months, among which the parliamentary elections to be held on 18 September 2005 in Afghanistan and the debate on the status of Kosovo. In both theatres of operation NATO would continue to safeguard stability for as long as necessary. The NATO training mission in Iraq would support the long-term development of the Iraqi security forces. About 1000 officers would be trained at facilities in Baghdad and a further 500 outside the country.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer underscored the importance of further developing cooperation with the Mediterranean countries, with a view in particular to increasing interoperability, combating terrorism and strengthening political dialogue. He announced upcoming visits to Tunisia, Mauritania and Egypt.
 

The debate focused first on NATO’s attitude towards Ukraine following the recent elections. It was stressed that the current form of cooperation with Ukraine had been negotiated with the previous government and that the new government was still in the process of determining its exact position on the country’s future relations with NATO. The forthcoming informal Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Vilnius (20/21 April 2005) could be decisive for determining the kind of signal to be issued to the new Ukrainian government.

 
There was also a discussion of NATO’s role in the transatlantic political dialogue and how that dialogue should be organised in future, from which it emerged that there had been a gradual shift away from the notion of NATO as a forum for “transatlantic partnership” towards that of a place for “transatlantic discussion”. The transatlantic dialogue, it was explained, continued within NATO which had put the rift over the Iraq intervention behind it. The important question now was how to shape that dialogue. With respect to a possible sharing of tasks between NATO and the EU, NAC representatives took the view that neither a geographic definition nor one based on the intensity of a given military operation was feasible and that each situation needed to be studied on a case-by-case basis, and that the existing arrangements for coordinating EU and NATO activities could be developed. NATO needed to be ready to face the threats where and when they appeared and member states had to be capable of carrying out a broad spectrum of tasks.
 

As regards NATO-Russia relations, attention was drawn to Russia’s role as a major global player and to the fact that many issues currently being addressed by the NAC had a Russian dimension, including the situation in Georgia and Moldova. Russia was suffering from a syndrome of isolation and of potential implosion. Relations with Russia were open and pragmatic and discussions were conducted in a “partner-like” fashion.
 
Assembly Members put questions – among other things – about NATO-Russia relations (Bart van Winsen, Netherlands, Federated Group and Adrian Cioroianu, Bulgaria); NATO’s political role and its relations with the United Nations and the EU (Jean-Pierre Masseret, France, Socialist Group, Ignacio Cosido, Spain, Federated Group and Georges Foulkes, United Kingdom, Socialist Group); the situation in Moldova and Georgia (Pedro Agramunt, Spain, Federated Group); the state of integration of the new NATO members (Jirl Oberpfalzer, Czech Republic); US concerns about the EU’s armaments export policy with regard to China, the need for deployable police forces and NATO’s role in combating poppy-growing in Afghanistan (Michael Hancock, United Kingdom, Liberal Group) and the need for a UN mandate for the deployment of NATO’s rapid reaction forces (NRF) (Renzo Gubert, Italy, Federated Group).
 

The parliamentarians were also briefed by the current Luxembourg WEU/EU-Presidency, represented by Ambassador Joseph Weyland, as well as by the Belgian Ambassador Dominique Struye De Swielande, Dr Stefanie Babst from NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division and Pol de Witte from the Political Affairs and Security Policy Division. During the meetings at NATO Headquarters, President Goris also spoke with Robert Simmons, the NATO Secretary-General's Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia.