KARACHI, Jan 25: The role of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) has raised many eyebrows since it has broaden its area of action to other regions after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. To discuss Nato’s current standing on various issues as well as its strategies, the University of Karachi’s Area Study Centre for Europe (ASCE) organised a lecture on its premises for its students.

The lecture was conducted by the French Ambassador Regis de Belenet. The topic of the lecture was changed due to unknown reason from ‘Nato and Afghanistan’ to ‘The New Nato Perspectives’.

The ASCE Director, Prof Naheed Ahmed Tahir, introduced the guest speaker. The French ambassador’s lecture, in a thick French accent, began with the description of Nato’s history.

He then explained how Nato’s role changed over the period of time, specially after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He said though the raison d’etre for Nato was to formulate a military alliance of European non-communist states, United States, Canada, etc., the alliance did manage to exist after the Cold War.

The ambassador posed certain questions that resonated what the audience had in mind. These questions were: Should Nato’s role be more expeditionary? Should Nato have new partnerships in Asia? Thirdly and most importantly, should Nato’s military role be transformed into that of a civilian organisation? If the answer, he said, for the last question was in the affirmative, then how would one be able to distinguish between Nato and the United Nation. He also said that if there was a dire need to establish peace and stability in a country in Asia or anywhere else for that matter, Nato would help, as it did in Kosovo, Bosnia and more recently in Afghanistan. He commented that it was nonetheless a war between two ubiquitous forces – Nato and Taliban.

However, he said that France did have reservations on establishing new partnership in Asia as it might be looked upon by other nations as that of establishing ‘anti-Chinese pockets’. He agreed to the fact that Nato did serve the purpose of an economic and political bloc for the West.

He opined Nato had always followed the UN Charter and never intended to go beyond it. He further remarked that after the 9/11, security of the states and terrorism had become a global concern and was, therefore, needed to be tackled collectively.

As soon as Mr Regis de Belenet finished his lecture, students and faculty members bombarded him with questions. He answered many of them but couldn’t carry on due to the shortage of time. The ambassador was accompanied by the French Consul General in Karachi, Pierre Seillan.