Text 3681, 328 rader
Skriven 2006-11-21 23:31:20 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0611213) for Tue, 2006 Nov 21
====================================================

===========================================================================
NSC Senior Director for European Affairs Judy Ansley Discusses the
President's Trip to Estonia and Latvia and the NATO Summit
===========================================================================

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
November 21, 2006

NSC Senior Director for European Affairs Judy Ansley Discusses the
President's Trip to Estonia and Latvia and the NATO Summit



4:18 P.M. EST

MS. ANSLEY: Good afternoon. On Monday, November 27th, the President will
depart for Europe where he will travel to Estonia and Latvia. This will be
the President's first trip to Estonia and his second trip to Latvia.

The President is traveling to Europe to attend the NATO Summit in Riga,
Latvia and to visit a NATO ally and a successful new democracy, Estonia.

The United States and Estonia are excellent friends, strong partners and
stalwart allies. Estonia is making important contributions in the war on
terror with troops deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan. Our relationship
is strong and close. The United States stands with Estonia, committed to
our common defense and bound by our shared values.

October 2nd was the 15th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. embassy in
Estonia. In the last 15 years, we have seen Estonia consolidate its
sovereignty and build a thriving free-market democracy. And we look forward
to many more years of close cooperation between our governments.

In Latvia, the President will meet with President Vika-Freiberga, a true
friend and partner of the United States, to discuss our shared commitment
to promoting global freedom. Latvia is also a strong partner in the war on
terror with troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the NATO Summit, the President will discuss how the alliance has
transformed to address the threats of the 21st century by improving its
military capabilities and its ability to work with like-minded security
partners around the world. Today, over 50,000 NATO soldiers are involved in
six missions on three continents.

The President will also discuss NATO's vital role to global security in
leading operations such as the International Security Assistance Force in
Afghanistan, where NATO has 30,000 troops participating with 11 partner
countries and is in charge of security for the entire country. The
President appreciates that NATO is an organization in which small allies
can make big contributions far from home in defense of our shared values
and common security. Estonia and Latvia are doing just that in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

I'll now briefly go through the President's schedule. On Monday morning,
November 27th, the President will depart Andrews Air Force Base en route to
Tallinn, Estonia. There are no other events on Monday.

Tuesday, November 28th, the President will participate in an embassy
greeting with staff from our embassy in Tallinn. Following the embassy
greeting, the President will travel to Kadriorg Palace for a welcome
ceremony followed by a meeting with the President of Estonia, Toomas Ilves.
After the meeting with President Ilves the President will travel to
Stenbock House for a meeting with Prime Minister Andrus Ansip. At the end
of this meeting, the President and Prime Minister will meet a group of
Estonians who have worked to promote democracy in other countries.

Following the events at Stenbock House, the President will depart for the
National Bank of Estonia where he and President Ilves will participate in a
press availability. A social lunch in honor of the President hosted by
President Ilves will follow at the National Bank.

Following lunch, the President will depart Estonia en route to Riga,
Latvia. This is a short flight, and arrival in Latvia will be in the
afternoon of Tuesday, November 28th. In Riga, the President will meet with
President Vike-Freiberga of Latvia at the Riga Castle. Following the
meeting, the President will depart Riga Castle to deliver remarks at the
University of Latvia, followed by a meeting with the NATO Secretary
General.

That evening, the President will participate in the NATO Summit program,
which begins with a Latvian cultural event at the National Opera House,
followed by a working dinner of NATO leaders.

On Wednesday, November 29th, the President begins with an embassy greeting
with the staff from our embassy in Riga, as well as the staff from the U.S.
Mission to NATO, who will be in Riga working the summit.

The President will then participate in the NATO Summit working session,
which will be followed by an official photo and a lunch for NATO leaders
and ministers hosted by President Vike-Freiberga.

The President will depart Riga, Latvia on the afternoon of Wednesday,
November 29th.

At this time, I'm happy to take your questions.

Q From The New York Times. I just wonder if you could talk a little bit
more expansively about what the President's goals are for this summit. What
is the main thing that he wants to achieve?

MS. ANSLEY: Certainly. The summit is intended to be a summit which looks at
NATO and its transformation post-9/11. And some of the main goals are to
ensure that NATO is able to more effectively perform its missions. It has
the military capabilities that it needs to perform around the world.

A lot of the things that we're looking at in terms of the initiatives that
will come out of the summit really come from lessons learned in
Afghanistan. For instance, we expect the alliance to announce an initiative
on strategic airlift, a consortium where 14 allies plus Sweden will be
buying C-17s. This was a particular problem that NATO has long had on
military capabilities with strategic airlift. And we think that this will
be a contribution to allow NATO to be able to perform operations at
strategic distance, as we are doing in Afghanistan. So that will be a big
contribution.

There will also be an initiative on special operations. This, again,
something that we learned was very important in Afghanistan, and there will
be a way for NATO to kind of consolidate and do joint training with some of
its special operations forces. Those are some of the things that we're
looking at in terms of capabilities.

Also I think that the summit will focus quite a bit on Afghanistan, on the
operation in Afghanistan because NATO is now in charge of security
throughout the country. Clearly, there have been some challenges with the
expansion in the south during the summer, where NATO has been challenged by
the Taliban. But NATO has performed very well. And the main thing now is to
make sure that the alliance remains committed to this mission, which is
important not only to Afghanistan but to our security in the West, and sees
it through to completion.

So I think those are some of the main things -- basically, making sure that
NATO is able to continue to effectively perform the many missions that it
has, missions that are increasingly far from NATO's shores.

Q Hello, Ms. Ansley. I am a correspondent with ITAR-TASS News Agency of
Russia. My question for you, would you be willing to discuss NATO's
partnership with Russia at Riga Summit? And do you think this subject would
come up during discussions there? Thank you.

MS. ANSLEY: I think that the issue probably will come up for discussion. I
think it will also be addressed within the communiqu . We have a close
relationship between NATO and Russia with the NATO-Russia Council. I think
there will be some evaluation of that. We'll get into the ten-year
anniversary of that next year. And I think NATO is looking for ways that it
can continue to strengthen its partnership with Russia, so I think that
that will be a topic of discussion.

Q Thank you.

Q Hi, I wonder if the President will once again press the other NATO
countries to increase their defense spending, and their contribution in
Afghanistan. And also, maybe you could discuss whether there will be some
discussion at the meeting about maybe redeploying some of the countries
around Afghanistan to bring more troops into the dangerous southern areas
and out of the more safe northern areas, please.

MS. ANSLEY: A couple issues there. On defense spending, I think that the
President will address the issue of the need for more resources for NATO
and for NATO countries to spend more for defense. This has been a fairly
consistent theme for us, whether it's the President or Secretary of
Defense, or Secretary of State for that matter. NATO has an awful lot of
challenges in front of it, has a lot of missions that it's trying to
fulfill. In order to do that, you need more resources. So I think you can
expect that he will discuss that issue.

The same thing in Afghanistan. If NATO is to be successful and to continue
to complete this mission, obviously, it will need enough troops and the
right kinds of troops to be able to do the mission. And it will need troops
in the right places, so I think that you can expect that there will be
discussion about the need for some flexibility in where troops are, for an
increase in the number of troops, maybe a decrease in some of the
restrictions on troops that are currently there. But there's going to be a
force generation conference, I think, within the next couple of days to
talk about the number of troops in Afghanistan. And we are hoping that we
will have what is needed. But right now, we think we're in pretty good
shape, but I think that we will address what is needed for the future. You
can expect that to happen.

Q Thank you.

Q Yes, thank you. Specifically on Afghanistan, when you talk about the need
for an increase in troops, does the President have an idea beyond the
30,000 there how many would be needed? And second -- that's a very specific
question -- but more broadly, how can we expect the President to address
with his partners there, the other leaders, the question of NATO's broader
role? What will be the points that the President will make with them on
NATO's broader role in the world?

MS. ANSLEY: Okay. Let me answer your specific question. I think in terms of
the number of troops, he'll look to his military commanders for advice on
that, to the NATO military commanders. And we've had commanders in the
south who have talked about needing an extra battalion, possibly an extra
battalion of Afghan troops as well in the south. So that will give you a
little idea of the numbers that are being talked about. And that's
obviously being discussed within NATO military circles as to how you best
meet that need.

In terms of NATO's broader role, I think the President sees NATO as having
to deal with security in areas outside of Europe now. If you look to the
threats of the 21st century, most of them are not right on the borders of
Europe as they used to be during the Cold War. They are coming from farther
away. I think Afghanistan is a perfect example. You have a terrorist threat
that has already hit our shores, obviously will threaten NATO and NATO
member nations again if we don't deal with it there.

So that's the kind of things the President sees that NATO should be
involved in -- is dealing with security issues, where they happen to be so
that they don't come to our own home countries. So NATO has to have the
ability to react to wherever the threats happen to be, to be able to go out
to distances.

We have a NATO operation in Iraq. We have a NATO operation in Afghanistan.
We have one in Kosovo. We have NATO troops involved in Darfur. So I think
it's really a matter of NATO being able to defend our values from the
threats wherever they happen to be and being able to deal with them at the
source of the problem.

Q Hi, I'm Nikkei Newspapers, Japan. I understand that the NATO is sort of
creating a new partnership with Japan, South Korea, and Australia. I wonder
what your expectations are to get from this partnership with these three
countries. And also, could you tell us a little bit more about the
President's remarks in the university in Latvia?

MS. ANSLEY: One of the initiatives for the summit is the global
partnership, to create a global partnership, and basically this is dealing
with kind of a practical reality. Right now in Afghanistan we have 11
countries outside the alliance participating in the NATO operation, the
NATO ISAF operation. The idea behind the global partnership is to allow
those partner countries, often security providers to NATO operations but
not necessarily limited to those, to be able to interact with the alliance
on a more normal basis and a more constant basis.

We have a number of what we call partnership tools that allow a lot of
countries to be able to, in Iraq, train more, pre-certify their troops,
take advantage of some of the planning capabilities at NATO, and we'd like
to be able to include some of the partner countries that are actually
involved on the ground in NATO operations on a more regular basis so that
when we have operations, we'll be able to come together a little more
quickly and be able to interoperate a little bit faster.

So I don't know so much if it's an expectation of what we might receive
from Japan. It's really opening up opportunities for other partner
countries who might want to participate in some of these NATO partnership
tools and participate in NATO operations to have a way to interact with the
alliance.

So that's kind of the idea behind the global partnership: recognizing the
fact that, in practical terms, NATO does interact -- we do conduct
operations with a lot of other countries. As I said, 11 in Afghanistan. We
have countries outside of the NATO alliance within our operation in Kosovo
as well. So this is a way to allow these countries to be part of -- kind of
interact a little bit more regularly with NATO.

Does that answer your question?

Q Yes. And the remarks at the university?

MS. ANSLEY: Oh, I'm sorry, yes. In Latvia, I expect that the President will
lay out his vision for what he expects the NATO Summit to achieve, and also
probably more broadly talk about the war on terror and challenges that the
alliance, the United States faces in the world as we go forward.

Q Thank you.

MS. ANSLEY: Okay.

Q Hi Judy.

MS. ANSLEY: Hey, Michael.

Q Just to follow up on the Afghanistan question, what would be your
assessment of why some of the other NATO countries have not been more
forthcoming with troops, and dropping caveats? And what do you think the
President's case will be to our allies in Riga about why they should be
more forthcoming in these areas?

MS. ANSLEY: Well, I don't want to try to anticipate how the President will
make his case, but let me try to do it this way. I think that what the
President will do is probably explain how important or just talk to his
fellow NATO leaders about the importance of this mission, the fact that it
is a mission that NATO has taken on, that is it is one that we should see
through to completion and do so successfully because of the importance to
our own security, as well as the importance to Afghanistan.

So I think the discussion will kind of go along those lines, Michael, in
terms of how he will make his case. You know this is the first real large
out-of-area operation NATO has ever taken on, and it's an important
operation. We have all 26 allies committed to it, and we just need to see
it through.

In terms of why countries have some of the restrictions, I don't have an
answer for that. I can tell you that a lot of them that are in the north do
think that they're doing valuable work there, and they are doing valuable
work in the north. And there are some concerns as they move from the north
to the south, maybe the north will become less stable. I've heard that from
some countries. But the specifics of why they are not going down to the
north, I don't have an answer. But I think that there will be a discussion
of the need in an alliance to go to the assistance of allied nations when
they need help, and when they're in battle. So we'll see if we can't work
through some of those issues.

Q And I'm just -- may I ask one follow-up? Do you think that the mission is
imperiled if it's not possible to get countries to be more flexible?

MS. ANSLEY: No, I think actually the mission has been remarkably
successful. When you take a look at it, obviously NATO was challenged by
the Taliban when they moved into the south. But NATO has responded very
strongly. They've stood and they've fought, and have been very successful
against the Taliban. So I don't see Afghanistan as being a mission in
trouble or someplace where we have a problem. I just think that this is a
good time for the leaders to get together and to kind of reassess and make
sure things are going all right.

But as far as we can tell, the mission is going fine. We just want to make
sure that we keep it on the right track, and that we keep it moving
forward.

Thank you.

END 4:36 P.M. EST

===========================================================================
Return to this article at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/11/20061121-3.html

 * Origin: (1:3634/12)