June 4, 2003	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 3, 1424

MADRID, June 3: Nato nations put their bust-up over Iraq behind them on Tuesday, vowing to push ahead with a radical overhaul of the alliance to deal with security threats far beyond the borders it defended during the Cold War.

Foreign ministers from the alliance’s 19 nations concluded at a meeting in Madrid that Nato was “bouncing back” after it was fractured by divisions during the Iraq crisis, Secretary-General George Robertson said. “Nato has weathered its storms in remarkably good shape,” he told a news conference.

Other Nato officials stressed the united front shown by the ministers who issued a communique whose every word — unusually — had been agreed before they sat down.

Robertson said Nato’s recent decisions to take over Afghan peacekeeping operations and support a Polish-led stabilization force in Iraq proved the alliance was living up to its year-old pledge to take on security missions anywhere in the world.

“We are not going to be some global policeman. But we’re not going to be a European beat policeman either,” Robertson said. “If the centre of New York City is attacked from the centre of Afghanistan, then that is where the interest of the alliance may have to be protected.”

Ministers discussed reshaping Nato for a post-September 11 world in which many countries see terrorism as the main threat.

But Belgium sounded a note of caution. While Nato had a role to play in fighting terrorism, it should not neglect its main mission of assuming collective defence, Deputy Foreign Minister Annemie Neyts said.

US COOL ON EU PLAN: Washington sought to cool European Union ambitions to take over Nato’s 12,000-strong peace force in Bosnia by the middle of 2004, arguing it was too early to even start discussions.

A senior US official said there was still much for the Western defence alliance to do in Bosnia, including rounding up indicted war crimes suspects, stamping out threats of terrorism and uniting the country’s ethnically divided society.

The United States also said it was too early to discuss putting an alliance stabilisation force into the Middle East. A few countries attending the Madrid meeting had suggested this as a possibility if current peace talks were successful.

A number of ministers had said the alliance should keep an open mind about the possibility of taking a greater role in rebuilding postwar Iraq, a Nato official said.

Ana Palacio, foreign minister of host Spain, said Madrid was “studying very carefully how best to participate in Iraq”.

The ministerial meeting came three months after one of the most damaging crises in the 54-year history of the alliance, when Belgium, France and Germany blocked moves to bolster Turkey’s defences ahead of the US-led war in Iraq.

The standoff pitted alliance members that stood behind Washington against those that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sneered at as members of “old Europe”.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell was attending Middle East peace talks in Egypt and did not come to Madrid.

His stand-in, Deputy Secretary for Political Affairs Marc Grossman, told reporters Nato was “well on the way to recovery”.

But diplomats said much remained to be done to rebuild trust within the alliance. One diplomat said there was deep suspicion that “old Europe” countries led by France were determined to build an EU defence policy increasingly independent of — and even in competition with — the US-dominated alliance. —Reuters