Warsaw, 16 November 2010 - AFGHANISTAN AND RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA DOMINATE LAST DAY OF NATO PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY

Earlier during the Assembly’s 56th annual session, members of the Defence Committee and the Science and Technology Committee had discussed the opportunities to improve co-operation with Russia over nuclear weapons strategy and missile defence implementation.  

In Afghanistan, progress had been slower than anticipated, even if it was moving in the right direction. Delegates from the Committee on the Civil Dimension of Security raised concerns about the results from October’s election, which had still not been publically finalized. Sven Mikser, Rapporteur of the report on Preparing the Afghan National Security Forces for Transition in the Defence and Security Committee, reminded the delegates that it was important the Kabul administration was perceived as legitimate. 

It was also important to continue to scrutinize claims of democratization to ensure they were not merely cosmetic, Slovenian Ambassador Janez Lenarcic, director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, said in his address to the plenary session. He welcomed co-operation with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in election observation and he called on the Assembly to join the “already impressive list” of organizations to have endorsed the UN General Assembly’s March resolution titled ‘Strengthening the role of the UN in enhancing periodic and genuine elections and the promotion of democratization”.

The delegates also agreed that the Alliance ’s expansion should continue as appropriate. “The door of the alliance should remain open to those democratic countries who can and want to take on commitments involved in membership,” Schetyna said.  In previous committee meetings, delegates had reiterated that both Georgia and Ukraine were still candidate countries, but that their respective accession procedures were not linked and were being assessed on their individual merits.

Current austerity measures had also led to some concerns over Allies’ military budgets in the “worst economic times since World War II,” as NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in his address at the plenary sitting. Poland ’s own defence expenditures “have been pegged at 1.95 per cent of gross domestic product” since it joined the Alliance, Shetyna said, but members of the Economics and Security Committee had earlier expressed concern that some member states might not be pulling their budgetary weight. In such times, it was important to “cut the fat” but “invest in muscle” such as “flexible and deployable forces” and missile defence, Rasmussen said.

Schetyna also stressed the importance of “further development of NATO-EU relations which should acquire a strategic nature”.   The Alliance’s New Strategic Concept, to be unveiled in Lisbon on November 19-20, and the taking effect of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty “will make it possible” to establish a closer co-operation, he said. Poland ’s presidency of the EU in the second half of 2011 “will undoubtedly take up this challenge” despite ongoing tensions between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus which continue to hold back security co‑operation.  A High Level Group “could serve as a forum” on the issue, said the head of the Polish delegation Jadwiga Zakrzewska, of the Civic Platform party.