|
Senior
U.S. Official Urges NATO to Adapt to Anti-Terrorism Fight
 |
| Wolfowitz
(right) says the NATO must adapt to new situation
|
WASHINGTON,
Feb. 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.S. Deputy Secretary
of Defense Paul Wolfowitz on Saturday defended independent U.S.
action in the “fight against terrorism” and said NATO must adapt
to the new situation.
Wolfowitz
told a 43-nation security conference meeting in Munich that "to
win the war against terrorism we have to reach out to the hundreds
of millions of moderate and tolerant people in the Muslim world,
including the Arab world."
The
goal is to "help to lay the foundations for a better world
after the battle against terrorism has been won," he said.
Wolfowitz,
who is considered a hardliner, said that on the military front U.S.
tactics were to use "not a single coalition but rather
different coalitions for different missions."
"The
mission must determine the coalition, the coalition must not
determine the mission," Wolfowitz said.
Giving
an example, he said: "At the end of the day, we don't need NATO
in the Philippines."
The
U.S. has just sent thousands of troops to the Philippines and says
that they will remain there for several months to come. The Bush
Administration also states that the troops are there to help the
Philippine government deal with “terrorist organizations plaguing
the region,” including the Al-Sayyaf group, which is notorious for
kidnapping and executing its victims - some of whom are American -
for ransom purposes.
But
Chinese and Indian officials warned against the United States going
at it alone.
Chinese
Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the U.S.-led anti-terrorist fight
should not be "arbitrarily" widened, in an apparent
response to comments by U.S. President George W. Bush.
He
said the United Nations should be more heavily involved.
Bush
has repeatedly referred to Iraq, Iran and North Korea an "axis
of evil," warning they could soon become the next targets in
the U.S. campaign.
Indian
national security advisor Brajesh Mishra said terrorism could only
be "tackled effectively with a global and comprehensive
approach."
"Compartmentalized
national approaches cannot advance our collective purpose of
crushing [terrorism], since terrorism has developed a seamless web
of international linkages," Mishra said.
Wolfowitz
said NATO must learn a lesson from the current crisis and adapt
itself to fight terrorism.
He
said "a military transformation agenda" was needed
"to develop NATO's capacities in counter-terrorism."
Wolfowitz
warned that the September 11 terror attack against the United
States, "terrible though it was, is but a pale shadow of what
will happen if terrorists use weapons of mass destruction."
"We
cannot afford to wait until we have a visceral understanding of what
terrorists can do with weapons of mass destruction, before we act to
prevent it," Wolfowitz said.
Wolfowitz
said NATO had provided valuable logistics support in the current
crisis but that the time has come "to launch a reform of the
Alliance command structure to make it leaner, more streamlined, more
cost efficient and, above all, more flexible."
He
said NATO, founded to defend Europe against a Soviet invasion, had
to change from "trying to guess which enemy the Alliance will
confront years from now" to focusing on what it could do to
meet new challenges.
German
conservative opposition leader Edmund Stoiber picked up the theme,
saying European Union (EU) states must answer the U.S. call to spend
more on defense.
"We
Europeans must not only rely on Americans. We must do more for our
own security. It is a truly European task," Stoiber said.
German
police on Saturday detained the leader of a coalition organizing an
illegal protest in central Munich against the security conference.
Police
detained Claus Schreer, 63, leader of the "Munich Collective
against NATO Security Policy," at the conclusion of a news
conference.
"We
detained Schreer because he was going to provoke a new demonstration
under the cover of a news conference," Munich police spokesman
Eberhard Roese told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
More
than 3,000 police, some of them in riot gear, are strictly
controlling access to the conference, with roadblocks, water cannons
and armored cars blocking off the streets.
Demonstrations
have been banned for the duration of the conference Saturday and
Sunday.
|
