THE NEW YORK TIMES, Monday, February 4, 2002
U.S. Officials Try to Assure Europeans on NATO By STEVEN ERLANGER MUNICH, Feb. 2 - Senior American officials tried to reassure Europeans at a global security conference here today that NATO still matters, but also warned that the Bush administration would continue its war against terrorism with its allies or without them. One top official, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the American deputy secretary of defense, was soft-spoken but blunt when he cautioned that whether the rest of the world wished it, the war against terrorism was not over. "What happened on Sept. 11, as terrible as it was, is but a pale shadow of what will happen if terrorists use weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Wolfowitz said. "Our approach has to aim at prevention and not merely punishment. We are at war." He told the gathered policy makers, "Those countries that choose to tolerate terrorism and refuse to take action - or worse, those that continue to support it - will face consequences." Mr. Wolfowitz, filling in for his boss, Donald H. Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, did not single out any nation. But he spoke in the context of the State of the Union address, in which the President Bush described Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil" that sought weapons of mass destruction and could not be ignored, even if they were not involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, was even more explicit, saying that Iraq is the next front of the war and "we should not shirk from acknowledging it." Of Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, he said that "a terrorist resides in Baghdad, with the resources of an entire state at his disposal," developing weapons of mass destruction that threaten the Middle East and the world. Senator McCain also warned: "A day of reckoning is approaching, not simply for Saddam Hussein, but for all members of the Atlantic community, whose governments face the choice of ending the threat we face every day from this rogue regime or carrying on as if such behavior, in the wake of Sept. 11, were somehow still tolerable." Later, Mr. Wolfowitz said Mr. Bush's speech "identified a problem" in Iraq, and "it's a leap from what the president said to any course of action." The reaction from European participants was a mixture of questioning and dismay. Menzies Campbell, a British member of Parliament, said that "action against Iraq, it seems to me, requires uncontrovertible evidence in order to act, and I speak as a member of a Parliament of a country willing to put boots on the ground." What would happen to the Middle East and how would Israel respond, he asked? Would Washington move against Iraq "without political support," from Europe, Egypt and Russia, he asked, "and would it matter?" Gerd Weisskirchen, a German legislator and foreign policy spokesman for the governing Social Democratic Party, said unilateral action by the United States would create huge problems. "After Sept. 11, our hope optimistically was that we'd find more multilateralism," he said. He was troubled by the American talk of "flexible alliances," making NATO seem less relevant. Karl Franz Lamers, a legislator and spokesman for the conservative Christian Democratic Union, castigated both Washington for acting unilaterally and Europe for not spending nearly enough to be taken seriously as a military ally. "I would ask our American friends to bear in mind that the core of the international coalition against terrorism is NATO," he said. "It can't be that you act on your own and we trot along afterwards. And we Europeans must be able to act, and it is not right we're not coughing up the required money for defense." The NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson, said last week that Europe had the status of "a military pygmy" and was falling farther behind the United States in military capacity and technology, risking a loss of credibility with its best ally. For instance, the $48 billion that President Bush wants to increase American military spending is by itself one-third higher than the military budget of Britain, NATO's second-largest military spender. More and more, NATO is being regarded as a political organization, capable of providing military insurance, deterrence and peacekeeping, but not capable, without Washington, of waging a modern war. Still, American officials tried to reassure Europeans that NATO matters still, in the Balkans and elsewhere. In the corridors, there was also much discussion of NATO's plans to expand, which will be taken up at its summit meeting this November in Prague. The Baltic nations are expected to be asked to join, along with Slovenia and Slovakia. France wants Bulgaria and Romania to join, too; Washington says it has not yet made a decision on which countries should join. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/03/international/europe/03SECU.html Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
