BERLIN, May 23: US President George W. Bush called on Europe on Thursday to fight terrorism alongside the United States and said NATO needs “a new strategy”, in an address to Germany’s lower house of parliament that was briefly disrupted by four pacifist deputies.

“We face an aggressive force that glorifies death, that targets the innocent, that seeks... murder on a massive scale,” Bush told the Bundestag.

He said Europe and the United States would “face these challenges together.”

At stake is “not just America and Europe. We are defending civilization itself.”

Bush was speaking on the first full day of a four-nation tour designed to reassure key US allies that Washington will not pursue the war against terrorism unilaterally.

He had earlier said his address would be a major expression of his administration’s policy.

Thousands of anti-war demonstrators have been in the streets of Berlin since his arrival. And during Bush’s address, four deputies from the former communist Party of Democratic Socialism and the Greens, part of the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s ruling coalition, unfurled a protest banner and walked out.

The banner read: “Mr Bush and Mr Schroeder, Stop Your Wars.” Other deputies shouted at the four, one of them wearing a red arm band, as they left.

On the war on terrorism launched after the September 11 attacks on the United States, Bush said terrorists are “seeking nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.”

“Wishful thinking might bring comfort but not security,” he said about avoiding the need to fight.

“Call this a strategic challenge, call it, as I do, axis of evil, call it by any name you choose but let us speak the truth,” he said.

“If we ignore this threat, we invite certain blackmail, and place millions of our citizens in grave danger.”

“Those who despise human freedom will attack it on every continent,” said Bush.

“Those who seek missiles and terrible weapons are also familiar with the map of Europe,” he said, adding that this threat cannot be appeased.

Bush said “NATO must be able and willing to act whenever threats emerge,” including “all the assets of modern defense — mobile and deployable forces, sophisticated special operations, the ability to fight under the threat of chemical and biological weapons.”

Bush, who is traveling to Russia for a summit with President Vladimir Putin Friday, said: “We must lay the foundations (for peace) with a Europe that is whole and free and at peace for the first time in its history.”

“America and Europe must throw off old suspicions and realize our common interests with Russia,” Bush said.

“We have moved beyond an ABM (anti-ballistic missile) treaty that prevented us from defending our people and our friends.”

But he said this had not led to an arms race, as some had feared, and that he would be signing in Moscow Friday “the most dramatic arms reduction treaty in history.”

Bush said the September 11 attacks had “cut a sharp, definite line in our history.”

There can be “no lasting security in a world at the mercy of terrorists in my nation or in any nations.”

He said “terrorists are defined by their hatreds. They hate democracy and tolerance and free expression, and women and Jews and Christians and all Muslims who disagree with them.”—AFP