BRUSSELS, June 12: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreed on Thursday to a huge reduction of its military bases as part of a drive to revamp the Cold War alliance for new security threats worldwide.
Defence ministers moved to cut the number of command headquarters to 11 from 20 and replace their Cold War U.S.-based military chief with a commander in charge of transformation.
“This is a new NATO... a NATO able to meet its commitments when times get tough,” Secretary-General George Robertson said at the 19-nation alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.
But the ministers’ meeting was soured by an outburst from U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld against a Belgian law which gives courts power to try foreigners for alleged war crimes. He said Washington would block further spending on NATO’s new headquarters in Brussels while the law still stood.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization command structure overhaul had at one stage appeared to be in jeopardy as Mediterranean countries haggled over the carve-up of bases, which bring both jobs and kudos.
But there was no hint of discord as the agreement sailed through, and certainly none of the acrimony that dealt a body blow to the alliance ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
Visiting Germany ahead of the NATO meeting, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday again drew a line between “old” and “new” Europe, repeating the phrase that fuelled transatlantic rows in the run-up to the conflict.
But Germany played down any lingering tensions.
“The consequences of different positions on Iraq have disappeared,” Defence Minister Peter Struck told reporters. “It is not important how long and when I shake hands with Rumsfeld. What counts is the working atmosphere, and that works.”
COST AND MANPOWER SAVINGS: Under the new command structure, there will still be a Supreme Allied Commander for operations, based in Belgium, who will lead the Alliance with the new Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.
Below that there will be three joint regional commands, down from five, and then six tactical-level commands — two each for air, land and sea operations — instead of 13.
The streamlining of the U.S.-dominated alliance’s cumbersome command structure, which during the height of the Cold War had peppered the Euro Atlantic area with 78 command headquarters, was launched at the alliance’s summit in Prague last November.
Along with a drive to improve military capabilities and build a rapid response force, it is part of a programme to make NATO relevant for new global challenges arising from failed states, terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
The aim is to move away from the static military posture adopted during the standoff with the Soviet Union and enable North Atlantic Treaty Organization to do what it could not do after the September 11, 2001, attacks on America: strike quickly and hard when an ally is attacked by a distant foe.
Making good on pledges to reinvent itself for threats anywhere in the world, North Atlantic Treaty Organization recently agreed to take command of peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan in August and it will provide support to a Polish-led stabilisation force in Iraq.
The defence ministers said in a statement that the command overhaul should “yield cost and manpower savings” which could be channelled into filling big gaps in European military capacity.
In this context, 11 European allies and Canada signed a letter of intent on Thursday to charter a handful of Antonov-124 military transport planes from Ukraine as part of a stop-gap plan before the first deliveries of Airbus A400Ms in 2009.
Their agreement left open the possiblity of chartering C-17 planes from Boeing Co. of the United States, though diplomats say this would inevitably be much more expensive.—Reuters