Nato chief: All allies will provide emergency support
Nato’s secretary general today said all 26 member nations will allow their troops in Afghanistan to provide emergency support to allied units anywhere in the country, despite criticism that some are refusing to authorise commanders to send their soldiers into more dangerous regions.
“In case of emergency, every single ally will come to the assistance and help of every other ally,” Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said.
“I’m confident that is the case, because I am confident that all 26 allies have exactly the same interpretation of what solidarity means.”
A Nato summit next Tuesday and Wednesday in Riga, Latvia is expected to focus on the alliance’s mission in Afghanistan.
Although all the allies have troops in the 32,800-strong force, Britain, Canada, the United States and others in the front line of the battle in the Taliban’s southern heartland have complained that Germany, Italy, Spain and France are keeping their troops in the more peaceful north and west.
De Hoop Scheffer appealed for all nations to withdraw “caveats,” or restrictions, on where there troops can operate, but he sought to downplay the increasingly bitter debate.
He insisted the summit would confirm that under threat, all allies would stand together.
“The Riga summit should underline that in case of emergency every ally will come to the assistance of every other ally,” he said. “That’s definitely achievable.”
He came to the defence of Germany which has faced criticism for keeping its troops in the northern sector.
“It is unfair and not justified to focus in the question of caveats on Germany,” De Hoop Scheffer said. He stressed that German troops were “doing a lot.”
Germany has 2,700 troops in Afghanistan, the third largest contingent after the United States and Britain.
Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted they will remain based in the north, the government has said units could be sent for short-term, emergency missions elsewhere in the country.
De Hoop Scheffer said he was confident nations would step up with contributions to the elite Nato Response Force in the next few days so that leaders can meet a deadline for declaring the 25,000-strong unit ready for action in Riga.
“We should not miss that deadline,” he said. “We’re almost there, but almost is not enough.”
He acknowledged it would a political blow if allies failed to fill remaining gaps in the force, but “not an absolute disaster.”
The NRF is the spearhead of Nato’s efforts to modernise its military to deal with new threats.
It should comprise land, sea and air units able to mobilise within days and deploy around the world to tackle missions ranging from humanitarian relief to full-scale combat.
Three years after the divisions over the Iraq war, de Hoop Scheffer stressed the unity of the alliance despite continued US-France splits over a range of issues on the alliance agenda – from closer relations with Asia-Pacific democracies, to a bigger Nato role in protecting energy supplies.
He said the Riga summit would produce compromises on such issues.
“The allies will find themselves on the different subjects,” he said. “I don’t see a schism, Nato is in good health.”
De Hoop Scheffer sought to ease French fears that the US proposal for a Nato partnership with Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand risked undermining the central role of the trans-Atlantic defence pact.
“Nato is also faced with threats and challenges of a global nature, and that is the reason that Nato needs partners, global partners,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a global Nato,” he added. “It’s something absolutely, fundamentally different.”
