MUNICH, Feb 12: The United States and Europe agreed on Saturday on a need to renew their transatlantic security vows to confront "Islamic extremism" and other modern threats, but tacitly conceded they did not yet know how to adapt their old alliance to new dangers.
In addresses to the annual Munich security conference, both German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was still a crucial institution at the core of the transatlantic security relationship.
"However, it is no longer the primary venue where transatlantic partners discuss and coordinate strategies," Mr Schroeder, who did not attend the conference due to illness, said in a speech read by Defence Minister Peter Struck to top-level defence and security experts from around the world.
The German leader said there had been "strains, mistrust and even tensions" between the United States and the European Union in recent years and while a US troop presence in Europe was still of "political significance" it was no longer the security priority that it was during the Cold War.
The security dialogue between the United States and the European Union "in its current form does justice neither to the Union's growing importance nor to the new demands on transatlantic cooperation," Mr Schroeder said, but "no one can produce ready answers" today on how to change it.
The German leader called for the European Union and the United States to create a high-ranking panel of independent figures to propose ways of revitalizing their security ties and adapting them to post-Cold War challenges.
Mr Rumsfeld was more enthusiastic in his endorsement of NATO, but also said that as a large, slow-moving institution it was of limited use in facing fast-moving threats.
"NATO is the most impressive military alliance in the history of mankind," Rumsfeld said. "But it is what it is... there are some times when things have to happen fairly rapidly."
The NATO alliance, Mr Rumsfeld said, "has navigated through some choppy seas over the years" and now needed to find a way to maximize cooperation in "fighting new threats such as Islamic extremism" and weapons proliferation.-AFP
