By Cheryl Pellerin
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, July 3, 2012 – NATO’s core
business is security, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters in
Brussels yesterday as he outlined the role of the alliance and the
international community in Syria and Afghanistan.
“NATO is where North America and Europe
come together every day to discuss the security issues which concern us,”
Rasmussen said, “and NATO is where Europe and North America work together every
day to find solutions.”
In NATO, any ally can bring any issue to
the table at any time, he added, referring to the meeting of NATO allies called
by Turkey after a June 22 shootdown by Syrian forces of a Turkish F-4 fighter
and its two-member crew.
“We condemn Syria’s shooting down of the
Turkish aircraft in the strongest possible terms, and we condemn the escalating
spiral of killing, destruction and human rights abuses in Syria,” Rasmussen
said.
“The right response to this crisis
remains a political response,” he added, “and a concerted response by the
international community against a regime that has lost all humanity and all
legitimacy.”
Last week Kofi Annan, the Joint Special
Envoy for Syria, announced a June 30 meeting of the Action Group for Syria in
Geneva. There, according to the United Nations, the international group forged
an agreement outlining steps for a peaceful transition in Syria while strongly
condemning the continued and escalating violence that has taken place there
over the past 16 months.
The group also called for all parties to
immediately recommit to a sustained halt of armed violence, to fully cooperate
with observers serving with the U.N. supervision mission in Syria, and to
implement a six-point peace plan that Annan put forward earlier this year.
The U.N. estimates that more than 10,000
people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Syria and tens of thousands
displaced since the uprising began.
Rasmussen said he welcomed the action
group meeting.
“The international community has come
together [and] … clearly endorsed a plan for a democratic transition to end the
violence and answer the legitimate aspirations of the people of Syria,” the
secretary general added.
To enforce the political plan, he said,
every member of the international community should use its influence to bring
an end to the bloodshed and move Syria forward.
“This conflict has already gone on for
too long,” Rasmussen noted. “It has cost too many lives and put the stability
of the whole region at risk. The international community has a duty to put an
end to it -- and to do it now.”
NATO is at work on another sort of
transition in Afghanistan, he said: to put the security of Afghanistan in the
hands of the Afghans.
“As we speak,” the secretary general
added, “half the Afghan population lives in areas where their own forces are in
the lead for providing security. And over the coming weeks and months, that
protection will extend to three quarters of the population.”
But security is just one challenge in
Afghanistan, and NATO is just one part of the solution, he said. In the bigger
picture of Afghanistan’s security future, Rasmussen added, development and good
governance must come together, and the international community and the Afghan
people are putting the pieces in place.
“Over the last few months, we have built
a strong framework of partnership and mutual responsibility on which
Afghanistan can rely as it stands on its own two feet,” he said.
In Chicago in May, decisions at the NATO
summit sent a clear message that after 2014, NATO’s mission will be to train,
advise and assist the Afghan security forces, Rasmussen added.
At a conference in the Afghan capital of
Kabul in June, the message was one of regional responsibility for the countries
of Central Asia and their neighbors to support Afghanistan well into the next
decade, he said.
Next week, the international community
will gather in Tokyo to show its commitment to Afghanistan’s long-term economic
development, he said, calling it a key opportunity to make sure Afghanistan
continues to develop and remain secure after 2014.
“Even when Afghanistan is fully in
charge of its own security, it will still be one of the poorest countries in
the world,” Rasmussen said. “And the best way to maintain its security will be
to help it face this challenge.”
At the same time, the international
community needs to know that the Afghan authorities will live up to their
commitments, the secretary general said.
Rasmussen said Afghan President Hamid
Karzai has pledged to improve governance, fight corruption and ensure the
protection of human rights, including the rights of women.
Delivering on those pledges is vital,
Rasmussen added.
“We now have a once-in-a-generation
chance to break the cycle of violence and extremism in Afghanistan,” the
secretary general said, “[and] to build long-term security for Afghans, the
wider region and for ourselves. It’s a chance we must all seize.”
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