28 February 2002

U.S.-European Capabilities Gap Must Be Narrowed, Burns Says

The widening gap in military capabilities between the United States and the European allies must be narrowed, Ambassador Nicholas Burns, the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO, told journalists in Ljubljana, Slovenia, February 28.

Burns added that the European allies "need to do more, invest more money, raise their defense spending -- particularly as a percentage of gross domestic product -- in order to invest in the new technologies. If this does not happen, the gap between the United States and our allies will widen further; and it will mean that the United States will have to shoulder a greater share of the responsibility for resolving crises here in Europe and beyond Europe."

Burns was in Slovenia with an interagency delegation, on the concluding leg of a visit to the nine governments that have applied for NATO membership.

All the applicant countries are "making very good reforms with their legislatures to meet the requirements of NATO membership," he said, emphasizing, however, that neither NATO nor the United States has yet made a decision as to which countries should be admitted to the Alliance.

Burns characterized Slovenia as a "serious candidate" that has "put forth a major effort to meet the requirements of the MAP [Membership Action Plan] process." He also said that the United States very much supports "the new efforts made by the Minister of Defense to modernize the Slovene military forces."

"Slovenia wants to have deployable companies and brigades of troops that can be sent at a moment's notice, on a very fast basis to wherever they are needed. This new strategy of the Slovene Government and the MOD is perfectly compatible, in line with the new strategy of NATO itself and with the United States," he said, adding:

"We in the United States have just recently, in the last five weeks, adjusted our military doctrine and made quite major changes in our military doctrine to emphasize speed, flexibility, modern advanced capabilities. The fact that Slovenia has already thought ahead of the curve, has already begun to make these transformations in its own forces, means that Slovenia is with the new wave, the new trend in the NATO alliance," the U.S. permanent representative on the North Atlantic Council said.

Following is a transcript of the press conference prepared by the American Embassy in Ljubljana:

U.S. Ambassador To Nato
R. Nicholas Burns
Press Conference In Ljubljana, Slovenia
Ljubljana, Slovenia
February 28, 2002

Ambassador Young: Good evening. We're very delighted to have with us today the US Ambassador to NATO, Ambassador Nicholas Burns. He's accompanied an interagency delegation for discussions with the Government of Slovenia on its candidacy for NATO. I will let Ambassador Burns share with you what has happened in the course of the day. It's been a very full, busy, and rich day; but I will stop here and turn it over to Ambassador Burns.

Ambassador Burns: Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We've had an excellent day of discussions with the Slovene Government. We had the great pleasure and honor meeting the President. We had a very good meeting with the President, and then a reception with him afterwards, and we had an excellent exchange of views on all the issues that are involved in Slovenia's candidacy for NATO. We also met with the Prime Minister and his staff and two members of his cabinet. Just before the meeting with the President, we had lunch with the Foreign Minister. We had a session with leading members of the Parliament, including the Chairman of the Parliament, and we had a meeting this morning with the Defense Minister. It was a very long and detailed meeting about Slovenia's defense and military reforms.

Throughout all these meetings, it is very obvious that the United States and Slovenia have excellent bilateral ties; we understand each other, we work well together, we have same values. In the case of the Balkans, Slovenia of course has been a major contributor to the efforts of NATO to bring peace to both Bosnia and Kosovo. Slovenia has been, has supported, the United States since September 11 in our effort to try to eradicate terrorism in Afghanistan. And these actions are consistent with those of a very strong friend and ally of the United States, and we appreciate them very much.

We discussed today all of the issues that are going to be factors in the decision that the NATO leaders need to make about which new countries will be invited to join the Alliance at the Prague Summit in November of this year. We ... my delegation has just finished a trip to the nine candidate countries. We started in Bulgaria a week ... eight days ago, and we've been ... nine days ago we've been in Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, Macedonia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and now Slovenia. And I can say that, throughout these nine days, we've seen a seriousness of purpose on the part of all of the applicants. We believe in MAP process -- the Membership Action Plan has been a dramatic improvement for NATO in giving a sense of certainty to the process and openness, and transparency. We think that all these governments are making very good reforms with their legislatures to meet the requirements of NATO membership. And we are very pleased by this trip.

NATO has not yet made a decision -- neither has the United States -- about which countries should come in; we'll do that later on this year, many months from now, but I can say that we emerged in this trip encouraged by the interest that we see in NATO membership. And it certainly speaks to the vitality of the NATO Alliance and the central role that NATO continues to play in Europe as the key organization for peace on the continent and the organization that unites North America with Europe.

It's been good to end this trip in Slovenia. Slovenia is a serious candidate for membership. Slovenia has put forth a major effort to meet the requirements of the MAP process. I know that Ambassador Young would agree that our relations in this ... in terms of the NATO enlargement process have been excellent, and we look forward to further discussions with the government on route to the Prague Summit.

Having said that, I'll be glad to take your questions.

Q: Tomaz Gerden, Radio Slovenia: Mr. Ambassador, ... how are you satisfied with our expenses for military purposes? Candidate countries ... for military expenses, especially because ... the United States criticized the allies in NATO that they don't give enough money for military purposes.

Ambassador Burns: Thank you very much. The issue of military capabilities is now one of the very much important issues before the NATO alliance. The United States has invested enormous sums of money in the last ten to fifteen years to modernize our military forces, and you've seen the result of that in the very high degree of performance and effectiveness of our armed forces in the Gulf War, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, and now in Afghanistan. The fact that we have invested in strategic lift, in precision-guided munitions, in special forces, in secure communications means that we can succeed in 21st century warfare. And our country has been very effective, as you've seen, in Afghanistan. We believe very strongly -- we Americans -- that it's important that this widening gap in military capabilities between US and our European allies must be narrowed.

NATO needs to remain a vital, vigorous, fighting force, prepared to defend the interests of all of its nineteen members; and that means that the European allies need to do more, invest more money, raise their defense spending -- particularly as a percentage of gross domestic product -- in order to invest in the new technologies. If this does not happen, the gap between the United States and our allies will widen further; and it will mean that the United States will have to shoulder a greater share of the responsibility for resolving crises here in Europe and beyond Europe.

We have discussed this issue with all of the countries applying for NATO membership. I am pleased to say that, of the nine countries we visited, the overwhelming majority are already spending 2% of their GDP on national defense. It is true of all the countries in the Balkan region -- Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania -- it's true of the Baltic countries -- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. And so in the course of our discussions today with the Slovene Government, we did make the point that adequate defense spending is an important element of a country's ability to take part in NATO operations. And we'll continue to raise this point not only with the candidate countries, but also with the countries which are already members of the Alliance, because it is a very important point for the United States indeed.

Q: Igor Juric, TV Slovenia: ... What do you think about the idea to professionalize Slovene army. There are two different points of view. One is of the Defense Minister that it be done in the next few years. There is also a proposal of the former Defense Minister that would make ... the army professional as soon as possible. This is the first question: The point of view of your Government and NATO. The second question is what you think that Slovenia still has to do before the Summit in Prague. What are the most important tasks?

Ambassador Burns: Thank you very much. As I said before, Slovenia is a serious candidate for membership in Prague. We had an excellent discussion with the Minister of Defense this morning and with the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces. I can tell you that we very much support the new efforts made by the Minister of Defense to modernize the Slovene military forces. He described for us the emphasis he puts on alpine forces, on mountain forces, which of course makes sense given Slovenia's geography, and history, and capabilities. He described that Slovenia wants to have deployable companies and brigades of troops that can be sent at a moment's notice, on a very fast basis to wherever they are needed. This new strategy of the Slovene Government and the MOD is perfectly compatible, in line with the new strategy of NATO itself and with the United States.

We have ... we in the United States have just recently, in the last five weeks, adjusted our military doctrine and made quite major changes in our military doctrine to emphasize speed, flexibility, modern advanced capabilities. The fact that Slovenia has already thought ahead of the curve, has already begun to make these transformations in its own forces, means that Slovenia is with the new wave, the new trend in the NATO alliance. And that's very good, indeed, to see. We had a very fine meeting with the Minister of Defense. We agreed on this transformation of the Slovene armed forces.

On your second question, let me just say that the Membership Action Plan is a new invention. It is the road -- the map, if you will -- to a decision at the Prague Summit. This plan, this process was not in place in 1997 when Slovenia was considered before. I think this is a vast improvement. It has given more certainty and openness to the process, and we have advised the Slovene Government -- as we advised all the other Governments -- that if they stick to the MAP process and fulfill the requirements of MAP, this is the best guarantee of success at Prague and with NATO; and my own sense is that Slovenia has made very important progress on the MAP.

That doesn't mean that there aren't issues that still need to be resolved. There are. That's true of all nine of the countries. In all nine countries and in all nine of my press conferences, I pointed out that there are some areas where countries still need to do further work. There are a few areas where that is an issue; we've talked about one of them, which is the issue of the 2%. It's not a MAP standard, it's more of a goal; it's not a MAP standard at all, but we talked about that, we talked about further reforms that need to be made in personnel, restructuring of the armed forces. But I can say, we had an excellent day. The progress has been very good. And we leave here very pleased with our relationship with Slovenia and committed to having the best possible relations we can in the months and years ahead.

Good. No further questions. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you.

end transcript