Estonian defense minister says NATO not facing threat of splitting

11.02.2008

"I think that for NATO as an organization, whose viability has been proved on repeated occasions over nearly 60 years, there is no threat," Aaviksoo told BNS in Brussels on Monday.

"Quite certainly the mission in Afghanistan is not the place over which partners should quarrel and give up functions as important as those that are performed by this alliance," he said.

Aaviksoo admitted that there was a strong link between the Afghanistan mission and public opinion, and through it with the domestic policy of the member states.

"It is countries that participate in the alliance, and in the democratic world the positions of countries are very strongly determined by support from the public opinion or the lack of it. And we know that the Afghanistan mission has a very different degree of popularity in various countries. Politicians do have to take this into account, and they cannot ignore the will of their people," he said.

What one should seek to do is bring the public opinion into conformity with the opinion of specialists, he said.

"While the military side of NATO has to a significant degree understood the necessity to deal with asymmetric risks beyond the classical theater, then making this clear to the public, including in Estonia, has not been that successful," said Aaviksoo.

"We, too, are being asked -- and justifiably -- what we are doing in Afghanistan and why are we there. I think that I've got a rather trustworthy explanation and I think that many officials and members of the military profession have that explanation too, but if we cannot make it clear to the people then we've not properly done our work," the minister said.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday the NATO alliance was at risk if it became split between members willing and unwilling to fight as he appealed to Europeans to support the war in Afghanistan.

"We must not -- we cannot -- become a two-tiered alliance of those who are willing to fight and those who are not," Gates told a gathering of security and military experts in Munich. "Such a development, with all its implications for collective security, would effectively destroy the alliance."

The same has been highlighted lately by Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

"NATO membership also means participation in NATO missions. This elementary notion is not necessarily always popular. If we allow NATO to develop into an a la carte alliance, where everyone chooses whether or not to participate in a mission -- we may face a time when we, too, might not happen to be everyone's choice on the menu," Ilves said in his speech on the anniversary of the Tartu peace treaty at the beginning of this month.

Aaviksoo is taking part as a main speaker in a roundtable on cyber security in Brussels organized by a think-tank called Security & Defense Agenda.

Also taking part in the forum is the Russian representative to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, senior officials from a number of NATO and European Union institutions and a diplomat from the Chinese mission.

Baltic News Service