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Skriven 2006-11-29 23:31:10 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0611294) for Wed, 2006 Nov 29
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Background Briefing by Senior Administration Officials on the NATO Summit
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For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
November 29, 2006

Background Briefing by Senior Administration Officials on the NATO Summit



Olympic Sports Centre Riga, Latvia

1:13 P.M. (Local)

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Good afternoon. I just wanted to briefly go
through the meetings and the summit. First of all, terrific set of
meetings. Really a vital moment in today's struggle for the allies to
recommit themselves to meet the challenges in the 21st century. A year ago
we laid out a transformation agenda; we achieved all of the things that
were on our agenda today. So that's the first thing.

Let me go through a couple of the highlights. On enlargement, you'll see in
the communiqué that the allies committed to open door policy, also
committed to inviting countries that meet NATO's performance-based
standards at the 2008 summit.

On Partnership for Peace, agreement was reached to invite Bosnia
Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia to join Partnership for Peace. This is a
step forward, we believe, in strengthening security in the Balkans region,
and improving the Euro-Atlantic integration of those countries.

We achieved a Middle East training initiative. That was a big thing on our
list, to further what the Alliance has been doing in training, increasing
the capability of partners that we might interact with in the future.

The NRF, the NATO Response Force, was declared fully operationally capable,
big achievement that we have. That was an initiative that was launched
years ago, but has now reached a big milestone. The Alliance adopted its
comprehensive political guidance, which is basically the QDR for the
Alliance going forward, focusing on the Alliance being a more deployable,
interoperable organization.

In terms of specific transformation initiatives, the Alliance adopted a
C-17 consortium initiative, which will address one of the key shortfalls,
military shortfalls in the Alliance, which is strategic airlift, and also
an initiative on special operations to improve the coordination and
interoperability of special operations forces.

To put some of these initiatives in context, most of them are things that
Afghanistan showed us that the Alliance needed to address future
challenges. So kind of -- Afghanistan was almost a bit of a testing ground
for some of these things. Alliance saw that we needed them, practical
initiatives, and we've adopted them today to move forward.

A couple of other things. A lot of discussion today about the need for the
allies to spend more. They laid out -- the allies agreed to a broad range
of things that they wanted to do, and basic agreement that you need the
resources, you need to put the money into this in order for the Alliance to
achieve its objectives.

Last thing, global partnership. This was another initiative that we had
been pursuing, another one that comes from Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, in
addition to all 26 NATO allies, we have 11 partner countries, ranging from
New Zealand, to Australia, Korea. This partnership initiative will allow
more interaction with NATO in these partner countries, allow them to --
these countries to interact a lot more with NATO, to be involved, to be at
the table as NATO develops plans for the future, use a lot of the
partnership tools that we have that are open to European countries, now the
EAPC countries.

So we think that this is a very practical step forward, that really
reflects the reality of what NATO is doing today. We're really interacting
with countries that are outside the Alliance to deliver security, to
address global issues.

Let me go through just a little bit of the dinner last evening. It was a
confidential meeting; it was just leaders plus one, so I can't give you
details, but let me give you a little idea of the atmospherics and the type
of the discussion.

It was a good meeting. It was focused almost entirely on Afghanistan. There
was an agreement that we have the power to succeed, the will to succeed,
and that we must succeed as an alliance on the Afghanistan mission; that
this is important for the future of Afghanistan -- not only for the future
of Afghanistan, but also for the future of the global war on terror and the
future of the Alliance -- the Alliance credibility is on the line in
Afghanistan -- and it will be a NATO priority going forward.

There were a number of ideas discussed, focused on really how to enhance
the effectiveness of the overall effort. There was an agreement that the
Alliance would pursue some of these ideas. And there were a number of
countries that announced initiatives -- new commitments, including troops,
including removing caveats. I don't have a list of specifics, since it was
a private meeting.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: At the end I'll just walk through the
communiqu and show you what we think our key achievements in the text are.
The text represents the 26 Alliance's consensus.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It represents years of work, 2001 in Prague
-- post 9/11 --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Post 9/11 transformation of the Alliance,
not that the transformation is completed, but we think that this is a major
step forward, and where the Alliance has to go, to kind of go from a static
Alliance that we used to have, just worried about the defense of Europe, to
an expeditionary, deployable alliance that faces threats that we face in
the world today, wherever they happen to be.

And I'd be happy to take questions.

Q Do you have any more specifics on the caveat?

Q Yes.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't, unfortunately. It was discussed at
the --

Q They're eased, right?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Afghanistan was discussed at the dinner.
What we have on the dinner is what we gave you, but we do understand that
there were --

Q So what happened on the caveats?

Q Did these countries agreed to change their restrictions?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: My sense is that overall, the mission was
strengthened by what some heads were able to bring to Riga. But what's more
important is what heads do as they go home from Riga, all with this
understanding of our need to have a very strong, solid mission going
forward.

Q Thank you very much for doing this, we really appreciate it. What sort of
time horizon does the President imagine for intensive NATO involvement in
Afghanistan?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We don't have a timetable for that. I would
imagine NATO is committed for as long as it takes to accomplish the
mission. It wasn't a discussion about time frame. The thought is out there
that this is an important NATO mission, and we have to succeed in
Afghanistan. But there was not a discussion about it.

Q There was a conversation on the sidelines about 2008. Was there any
conversation about that?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The only thing that was talked about in the
context of 2008 was the 2008 summit and the hope to invite new members to
join in 2008. So we're hoping for another round of enlargement in 2008. But
there wasn't a discussion of anything else that I heard of tied to 2008.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I heard no one, either in the meetings nor
in the corridors, say we ought to have an Afghan time horizon of 2008 or
any other time. I didn't hear anything.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, in fact -- tough mission and we're
going to succeed, that was kind of the thought on that.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: In our 26 agreement here, we talk about
being committed to an enduring role in support of the Afghan authorities.
I'll walk you through all this in a second.

Q -- to the French proposal of having greater outreach to Iran in the
context of Afghanistan? Chirac was talking about that yesterday, today and
the day before.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: There's nothing in the communiqu . It
didn't come up in the meetings today.

Q The French have said they brought it up in the meetings. You're saying
that it did not come up in the meetings?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It could have been in the dinner. It did
not come up at the table today, but I will check my notes.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: But, again, we don't have anything more
from the dinner last night because we weren't in attendance.

Q On the discussions to integrate Bosnia and Serbia, were there any U.S.
reservations about the war crimes issue? I know some other countries
expressed reservations about that.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You'll see in the communiqu that there is a
mention of the need for full cooperation with ICTY. The other thing that I
can add is that the President received a letter from President Tadich on
the 21st -- the 21st was last week -- where President Tadich talked about
the importance of Serbia integrating into Atlantic institutions, and fully
committed to cooperation with ICTY. And that was clearly a factor in the
decision.

Q Is the U.S. satisfied with that?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Satisfied might be too strong a word. I
think that the thought is that NATO will keep looking at this issue, but
we'll work it from the inside. We've been trying the other way for about
three years, and that has not been successful. So let's bring them in,
let's work with them, and we'll still monitor. In fact, I think the
communiqu says we'll continue to monitor cooperation with ICTY.

Q Did you get what you wanted when it came to the troops issue, and the
resources issues, and Afghanistan? Is it still a work in progress? You said
that countries were going to go back -- the leaders were going to go back
to their countries and try to work this out.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think what we got, and we were looking
for, was a recommitment to the importance of the mission, and an
understanding that there needs to be flexibility, that we need to get the
command of the resources they need. So you'll see, when you look at the
communiqu , that all of the main themes are in there. What we don't have is
a specific list of what each country is going to do to achieve this.

Did you want to add something?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I was just going to say, I think the
symbolism of being here in Riga -- the President spoke about it yesterday,
but I felt in the room today that it was very strong among all leaders that
this Alliance was founded with the idea of promoting freedom on this
continent, and a really strong sense that we are here in Riga, having a
NATO summit, and it is that same set of values that enabled the Alliance to
succeed in the Cold War that is propelling us today to put our effort in
Afghanistan and to work together to train Iraqis. I thought it was quite
poignant this morning.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The other thing I noticed, just to add to
this, was there's a lot of discussion about enlargement, an awful lot of
discussion about enlargement. A lot of the countries talked about it, it
wasn't just from the U.S. perspective, but a lot of the leaders talked
about having to continue to enlarge this Alliance, and wanting to be able
to issue invitations in 2008.

So it was kind of carry through that theme of, we're in Latvia, it's a
country that's only been in the Alliance for two years, what a remarkable
thing NATO has done to be able to spread freedom and democracy across
Europe. And it's clear that at a heads of state level, they want to
continue that.

Q How many C-17s?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Three-and-a-half.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Timeshare kind of deal.

Q How many do they have now?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Nations own C-17s nationally mostly. This
is our first effort as having -- this is our first effort to allow
countries to buy by the hour.

Q So we're really going from zero, under NATO.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: In a sense it is. And what you'll see, when
you see the list of the countries that are buying into this, these are
countries that can't afford a C-17, for the most part, so you share it.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The beauty of using NATO for this, is if a
country only needs a tenth of a plane or a quarter of a plane, we can get
them together here, and it makes it cheaper and easier, and it also makes
the training easier, and the bedding down cheaper, and all that stuff.

Q Can anybody be more definitive on the commitment of troops, numbers?
There was an effort at one point to at least increase the number by 2,500
or so, added on to the 32,500 total --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: There was no discussion of that this
morning. Do you have anything?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Again, we never intended this meeting to be
a pledging conference. That's not what it was about. Our understanding is
that some countries in the private dinner did say that they're going to do
more. We don't have those numbers, but what's most important is that they
all had a highlighted sense of the importance of sticking with it, of being
-- of having solidarity among them, and they'll all go home now and think
about how they sustain this for the long term, and how each of them does
it.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: There was a strong sense in the two dinners
last night, the heads dinner and the foreign ministers dinner -- of NATO as
an alliance in action to defend values. And this came out very strongly in
the discussion of Afghanistan, and it echoed today in the meetings at the
table -- the symbolism of Latvia was one element, the discussion of
Afghanistan was another.

But you had -- and I think it was important to have -- a recommitment of
political will, and the Alliance to remind itself why it is in Afghanistan
and how important the Afghanistan mission is. And that you heard very
strongly last night and this morning. And you also -- I can say so -- also
heard it especially from Chirac and some people that have been
traditionally more NATO-skeptical people were saying that this really is
important, we really do need to succeed here. That was an important
message.

Q When you read what they talked about at the dinner last night, you said,
power to succeed, will to succeed. Was that a statement, or just a verbal
thing?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: That was the feeling that came out of the
meeting, the thought that came out of the meeting.

Q You said that you didn't come to the meeting with a specific shopping
list of sorts of what countries could commit or should commit, but in the
runup to this, NATO military commanders were both blunt and specific of
where the shortcomings were, and specifically what they needed as far as
troops and equipment. I don't think anyone really doubts as a concept that
Afghanistan is important, but if you leave without specific commitments to
address the specific request commanders have made for four months, how is
this in any way progress other than political and verbal progress?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think it was important that at the level
of heads of state, heads of government, that nations recommitted to this.
And I'll just add one thing to what my colleague said, is no one argued
against it. You might not think that that's an important thing, but they
did. No one said, done enough already; we don't need more troops; there
isn't a problem -- nobody argued on the other side. It was really the
general consensus that not only is the mission important, but we need to do
what it takes to make the mission succeed.

So you get that at the heads of state level, and they do go back and give
instruction. There were specifics last night, we know there were, we just
don't have the list of what they were. So I think you'll see it in the next
few days. You'll see countries talking about what they'll send.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Do you want to go through this? Is that
useful?

Q That would be great.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Do we have any other general questions?

Q Yes, I have one more question. With regard to enlargement, one of the
countries the President mentioned yesterday was Georgia. Did that come up
specifically, and what is its status?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think that there was -- again, you'll see
in the communiqu how it was handled, but there was general discussion about
the need to enlarge in 2008, always performance based, as it's in the
communiqu , discussion about a number of countries. There was discussion
about the three that are now -- Croatia, Albania and Macedonia. There was
also discussion about Georgia and Ukraine, since they're both in
intensified dialogues, and they're on a membership path.

Various views, you know -- will they be ready by then, will they continue
reforms. In the case of Ukraine, will they want it. So there was a lot of
discussion. There wasn't a decision made, per se. you'll see the way it was
handled in the communiqu , which is basically a bit of encouragement, in
terms of what they've done, but also talking about what still needs to be
done on all five of the countries.

Q Is the friction with Russia a factor?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I was actually impressed with the number of
leaders around the table today who spoke positively about the need for the
Alliance to support democratic reform in Georgia, and to use intensified
dialogue to do that.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: There is a strong sense that the Georgians
need to do their utmost to resolve their so-called "frozen conflicts," of
these breakaway territories peacefully and responsibly. And I would say
that's a strong sense. And I heard that.

What I did not hear was anybody saying, well, we can't move forward with
Georgia because Russia doesn't like it. The Alliance has had experience
with NATO enlargement with Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary in the mid
'90s, the Baltics earlier in President Bush's presidency. So the Alliance
can deal with that, but the emphasis was, as it should be, on Georgia to
perform. The sense was, if I can characterize it, when Georgia is ready,
the Alliance should be ready. And so the emphasis is Georgia, not Russia,
and not us, but Georgia to do what it has to do.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You'll see in the communiqu that there was
also a discussion about NATO and Russia, and improving cooperation between
NATO and Russia. So there was some discussion of Russia.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: This is the follow-along-with-us communiqu
brief, okay? So, para one and two, just what we're about. I would just say,
as you look at this, look at the number of times we use the word "values"
-- defensive values, defense of our security and values. And, again, a lot
of the discussion this morning/last night was a reaffirmation that we were
founded to defend values -- defend them -- and in those days, our
understanding was we had to defend them here. Now we know that those same
values, that same sense of security has to be defended out there and that
that is what binds all of what we do -- Afghanistan, the training of
Iraqis, the support to the African Union, patrolling in the MD. It is in
defense of those founding values of the Alliance.

Okay. So you see us saying the very first thing, "meet the security
challenges of the 21st century" - that's in paragraph one. Para three, same
line the President used yesterday, "six challenging missions and operations
in three geographic regions." I think the first sentence gives you a sense
of the sweep, the global sweep of what NATO is up to -- from Afghanistan to
the Balkans, from the Mediterranean Sea to Darfur.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And remember, for perspective, during the
Cold War, the period that everybody lionizes as NATO's great day -- NATO
didn't actually do anything; it was ready to do everything -- did nothing.
Now it's doing.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I guess I would say, if I had to pick my
line that would summarize this summit, it's the first line of paragraph
three: "From Afghanistan to the Balkans, from the Mediterranean Sea to
Darfur, in six challenging missions and operations in three geographic
regions, we're advancing peace and security and standing
shoulder-to-shoulder with those who defend our common values of democracy
and freedom as embodied in the Washington Treaty."

Okay. So it's all of that geography, it's all of those values, and it's not
just us, it's us standing shoulder-to-shoulder with those around the world
who want to do the same thing. Okay?

Then I would look carefully, if you're interested in Afghanistan, at paras
four through seven. You can look at this as an integral whole. Here we talk
about our political commitment to Karzai and the people of Afghanistan. We
talk about all the things we're doing in security terms, including training
the ANA. And nationally looking at what we can do to train the police --
very, very important; hard fought here at NATO. And then the next is, no
security in Afghanistan without development, no development without
security; speaks about the importance of PRTs. Also this new strong sense
that NATO has got to work very well with the U.N., the EU, other
international actors in our theaters -- you see that later, as well.

Kosovo. Here para 10 is an effort in NATO-speak -- it's a little bit hard
to understand - but if you look down five lines from the bottom, you have
an actual tasking from heads to foreign ministers to improve NATO's ability
to work with partners in the theater -- U.N., relevant international
organizations, non-government organizations. At NATO we call that concerted
planning in action. It's a new way of thinking about security; it's not
just a military effort, it's an integral effort with civilian security
providers.

Okay, global partnership. It starts at para 11. The operative new part for
you all, in addition to our commitment to strengthen our existing fora, is
13, the second bullet. Here we enable the Alliance -- first of all there's
a tasking to the North Atlantic Council to take this global partnership
stuff forward, develop it, institutionalize it. Here, 13-2, "enable the
Alliance to call ad-hoc meetings as events arise" This will be done using
flexible formats, and it will allow us in a way we haven't been able to do
before to mix and match countries in the EAPC, the MD, the ICI, and/or
interested contact countries. Interested contact countries is NATO speak
for countries that work with us that aren't in one of those regional boxes
-- Japan, Australia, South Korea, maybe in the future other countries,
Afghanistan itself, those kinds of things.

Q I don't see anything about training.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Hold on, we're not there yet. This is a
little bit dense. The other key operative point is 13, the 3rd bullet. This
is the opening up of the partnership tools. This is one of our main
objectives, to get all of the tools that we currently have available for
our folks in the transatlantic space opened to all countries. It will allow
us to train and do interoperability work with countries like Australia,
Japan, et cetera. That's what this is down here.

Okay, then 17 is your training. Starts with that we have a lot of expertise
in training, we're going to develop this further. Specifically, in the
middle of the paragraph, in the initial phase, we're going to expand the
course offerings and create a Middle East faculty at the NATO Defense
College. And in the second phase, we are going to look at -- consider
supporting the establishment of a Security Cooperation Centre in the
region. That's your new Middle East training initiative.

Eighteen is Iraq. Strong recommitment to the training role that we have in
Iraq. And here in the middle, we task the military authorities to expand
the course offerings that we do. This is code for our effort to start doing
gendarme training at our NATO school in Rustimiyah, Baghdad, which is work
we have to get going.

Okay, 20 is terrorism. A lot of stuff you've seen before here, Operation
Active Endeavour, our operation in the Med. I want to point out one thing
in particular. We commend NATO's Defence Against Terrorism initiatives.
These are -- I don't know how many of you got a chance to go see the
exhibit across the way. I hope you saw it -- didn't go. None of them went?
Oh my goodness, it's so fabulous.

This is NATO's effort to put together countries to do counter IED
technology, hardening of helicopters, new chem/bio detection techniques. I
went over there and put on all the equipment, special forces working
together -- that's elsewhere. So we commend those efforts, including
development of cutting-edge technologies to counter terrorist threats, et
cetera. So again, working together in this house we make each of our
militaries stronger.

Then you get into all the defense transformation stuff. Obviously, 23, NRF
fully operationally capable.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Remember, the NRF was an initiative --
launched as recently as the Prague summit in 2002. It has gone from --
sorry, the NRF has gone from a concept and a bunch of pieces of paper to an
actual -- it's actually several brigade-strength force, now fully -- in its
composite, fully operational. That's very fast.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And we've already used it, even before it
was fully operationally capable, to do humanitarian relief in Pakistan, as
you know.

Okay, there's a whole bunch of wonky defense stuff in here, for those of
you who are into that stuff. I want to point out in particular bullet
three. This is our new special operations forces transformation initiative.
This is a cooperation center where special forces will be able to train and
work doctrine and other things together.

Q Can you give us any points on that? Starting small, I assume --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think as a training staff that is then
going to do courses for larger work, I think it's on the magnitude of 300,
but it's going to depend on how many countries want to participate. But I
would ask that of Jones' people. And I think it's still in development. But
it's a place where we can do training, we can do doctrine, we can do common
communications, we can solve problems. And when you go out to the exhibit,
if you do, you'll see some of the special operators working together.

Network Enabled Capability you se two bullets down. This is really key to
being able to fight well together.

Intelligence fusion. This is something we've never done before. We're now
doing it for Afghanistan. We have a fusion center that allows all of the
different countries developing intelligence in Afghanistan to shoot it back
down to the operators, where they need it.

Missile defense at the bottom, we signed the new -- the first contract to
begin developing this work.

Okay, para 26, this was very, very important. This is about the need to
resource defense. Very difficult issue in the Alliance. We're only seven --
only seven out of the 20 allies spent 2 percent or more on defense. We had
wanted to reverse the slide, the downward slide in defense budgets, and we
have a commitment to do that here in the middle of the paragraph; all 26
saying, "Therefore we encourage nations whose defence spending is declining
to halt that decline and to aim to increase defence spending in real
terms." That is a strong statement from all 26, particularly because for
many European governments this is very difficult at home. But they've
committed to do it here today.

Q It's phrased as "we encourage them to do that," --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: "We encourage nations whose defense
spending is declining to halt that decline and to aim to increase defense
spending in real terms."

Q I read that, but encouraging and aiming you take as a commitment to
actually do?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: This is all of them together, being willing
to sign up to this. Remember, this is in the mouths of heads. So each of
these heads has to go back and meet this commitment. So you don't get them
to sign up for it if they're not willing to live up to it. That's the
importance for us here.

Okay, going on, 29 starts with enlargement. Obviously, reaffirming the open
door in the middle of the paragraph. And then here, this was very important
for us, because we have -- in the middle of the paragraph -- "All European
democratic countries may be considered for MAP or admission, subject to the
decisions of the NAC." In other words, if you meet the treaty terms, you
can't be excluded before the process starts, you can be considered.

And then here is the operative promise to all of the aspirants at the
bottom of 30, "At our next summit in 2008, the Alliance intends to extend
further invitations to those countries who meet NATO's performance based
standards and are able to contribute to Euro-Atlantic security and
stability." Then we go on with a line of encouragement for Albania and
Croatia and Macedonia.

And then here, in 36, is where we combine the carrot of granting PfP and
membership in the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council to Bosnia Herzegovina,
Montenegro and Serbia, at the same time we make clear our expectations
about ICTY. "In taking this step, we reaffirm the importance we attach to
the values and principles set out in [those] basic documents, and notably
expect Serbia and BIH to cooperate fully with ICTY." And we'll monitor
these efforts.

Georgia and Ukraine paragraphs follow. Again, it was very important in
Georgia-Ukraine terms, which begins in 37, that we get this strong; nobody
excluded open door language in 29.

And then we have NATO-Russia, we have NATO-EU, we have the CFE Treaty, all
standard in NATO communiqu s.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Forty-three.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, 43 is new. Forty-three is new, and
it's important, and it reflects our concern about frozen conflicts. And it
talks about the regional conflicts, but what's most important is the second
line there, "Our nations support the territorial integrity, independence
and sovereignty of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the Republic of
Moldova. Those of you who know that part of the world know why we want to
say that.

Anything else there, Dan?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: That's important, especially in light of
the question you asked about Georgia. This stuff, taken together, is pretty
strong considering the news and your question about Russia.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Forty-four, we have -- this is arms
control. You'll see for the first time, I think in my memory anyway, we
have a strong statement about North Korea and a strong statement about
Iran. This goes to our larger effort to ensure that NATO is a place where
we talk not just about the security challenges where NATO is the center
actor, but also other security challenges around the world where we have
shared interests.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: This is actually very important, because
NATO -- remember how many papers were written and how many debates were had
about NATO in area and out of area? NATO is not a global alliance, it's a
transatlantic alliance. But it increasingly has global missions, global
partners and global capacity, global reach. And this is part of NATO
getting its mind around the problems which constitute a potential threat to
transatlantic security, which are no longer located in what used to be the
Soviet Union. It's now problems in Iran, problems in North Korea. That's
what NATO is focused on.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Some have argued that NATO had no business
having an opinion about North Korea and having opinion about Iran. Here you
have all 26 saying this is of concern to us and we are all bound by what we
are doing together in the UNSC. So please do look at that, and will help us
to keep these issues strong here at NATO going forward.

Energy security, another issue that is in our founding charter, in NATO's
founding treaty, but which we haven't talked about for a long, long time in
this house. Paragraph 45, a very strong tasking to the council, to us who
work there all the time, "to consult on immediate risks in the field of
energy security in order to define those areas where NATO can add value to
safeguard the security interests of allies, and upon request, assist
national and international efforts." So this is NATO saying there are
aspects of energy security that are our business, and we're going to work
on this together.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Again, in the context of all the discussion
of the strategic implications of energy in Eurasia, and the gas cutoffs,
this is seen as NATO not writing off, but getting itself into the whole
question of security. It doesn't mean energy policy is now going to be
decided at NATO, but energy security is something NATO discussed in the
Cold War, and now is back looking at.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And again, when you negotiate something
like this with 26 allies, this is the floor of what allies believe and have
agreed to, and it gives us a way to springboard forward. And you see all
the taskings in here, the things we're going to be working on going
forward.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Sorry to go into the wonkish detail, but --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: That's what we're paid for.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, it's also, the details add up, and
then all of a sudden quantity becomes quality, and you have a new NATO, and
people like you say, well, when did this happen? You know, through things
like this, over the past few years. And then you wake up expand your NATO.

Q How long was this worked on at the staff level?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: A few weeks.

Q So did anybody -- any of the leaders give the President unsolicited
advice on what he should talk to Maliki about? Was that kind of in the
backdrop at all?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think a lot of leaders were interested in
the President's speech yesterday. It's his first trip to Europe since the
midterm elections -- wanted to hear how he would express the world and
NATO's place in it, and that was one of the strongest speeches on the
relationship between NATO and our values and the freedom agenda. And it was
a positive speech, but also an ambitious one. And I think that did affect
the discussions.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You might ask Secretary Rice on the plane;
our understanding is the foreign ministers talked quite a bit about Iraq.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I can't talk about the dinner, I wasn't
there. I got an extensive dump, but I don't like second hand, I'm a little
wary of it. You can tackle her.

END 1:50 P.M. (Local)
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