NATO Secretary-General wants “more significant” relations with Finland

Rasmussen says Finland and other partners to be heard about new NATO strategy

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NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen wants to strengthen relations between the alliance and non-member “partnership countries” such as Finland and Sweden, and to increase the political significance of these relations.
      “I am currently preparing changes to our partnerships that would make them more dynamic and as such, more significant for the partners”, said Rasmussen at his office at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
      On Thursday he will be in Helsinki to attend a seminar on NATO's "Strategic Concept", with the subject of comprehensive crisis management, uniting military and civilian activities.
     
Rasmussen says that as participants in the crisis management operation in Afghanistan, Finland and Sweden could be allowed to take part in the preparation and making of decisions.
      He would not specify what kinds of practical activities were being planned in NATO for the expansion of cooperation. Sweden and Finland are not planning to apply for NATO membership, at least not in the near future.
      “I would like to bring political leaders into the partnerships more”, Rasmussen said.
     
In early February in a speech in Munich, Rasmussen described NATO’s future as that of a centre of security networks and consultation.
      Rasmussen will have to adapt his vision to everyday reality when he draws up a new “strategic concept” for the approval of NATO member countries by the end fo the year. The previous time that NATO set new policy lines and goals for itself was in 1999.
     
Rasmussen said that Finland and the other partnership countries would also be heard later, when he takes over the preparation of the strategy from a group of experts that is working on it now.
      He noted, however, that the security guarantees in Article 5 of the NATO charter would continue to extend only to member states.
      The member states have very different views on how mutual defence, crisis management in Afghanistan, and new scenarios of threats are to be emphasised in the new concept.
     
The NATO obligations remain primary in Rasmussen’s view for those Nordic Countries that are members of NATO. He is not especially keen on suggestions of supplementary security guarantees among the Nordic Countries, but he has not ruled out the possible participation of Finland and Sweden in the monitoring of Iceland’s air space, for instance.
      No decisive changes are to be expected in NATO’s nuclear arsenal. The present strategy refers to a “small number” of Trident nuclear warheads held by Britain as a NATO strength. When the dream is turned into a reality, the nuclear deterrence will remain in the new strategy, Rasmussen says.
     
Rasmussen sees Afghanistan as a model example of how the defence of NATO’s own territory begins far from its own borders.
      According to Rasmussen, the new strategy that guides NATO’s military actions in Afghanistan have been a “great success”, and the shifting of the responsibility for security to the country’s own security forces will begin already this year. He did not speculate, whether or not Mazar-i-Sharif, where Finnish forces are deployed, would be one of the first areas in which control would be handed over to the Afghan army.
      One of Rasmussen’s goals is being put to the test in Afghanistan.
     
The Secretary-general emphasises the importance of women’s rights in NATO activities, while at the same time, NATO is seeking negotiations with the Taleban, which want essentially to deprive women of all human rights.
      Rasmussen says that responsibility for the talks is with the Afghan government, and the other side needs to accept the Afghan constitution.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Niinistö: NATO membership awaits at end of European road (12.6.2009)
  Study: Finnish NATO membership would be hard for both NATO and EU (6.11.2010)
  Finnish Air Force tightens cooperation with NATO (27.10.2009)

See also:
  Finland to NATO meeting without promise of greater Afghan force commitment (4.12.2009)

Links:
  Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs: Future of Nato to be discussed in Helsinki (Strategic Concept Seminar)

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