Brussels
3 March 2008
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) needs a full range of
international actors including India in order to accomplish its military and reconstruction
missions in Afghanistan, according to a NATO official.
The official said that NATO and a "like-minded" India could synergise their efforts in
Afghanistan so that stability is restored quickly in that war-torn country. Today India is
operating independently of NATO in Afghanistan.
India is primarily engaged in reconstruction and development activities. The Indian
assistance ranges from infrastructure projects to capacity-building programmes. India is
the fifth largest bilateral donor in Afghanistan.
NATO, on the other hand, is leading the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in
Afghanistan since August 2003. Initially restricted to providing security in and around
Kabul, NATO today is active in other parts of the country.
The official from the NATO headquarters here, who did not want to be quoted, went on to
suggest that Afghanistan could serve as a "trigger" for greater contacts in future between
India and the 26-member NATO.
There is scope for deepening and diversifying the ongoing dialogue with a "global
partner" like India to combat asymmetric threats such as terrorism and proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, the official said.
"There are many possibilities of cooperation [but] it will be up to India to decide what it
will want to do and to propose," the official elaborated, ahead of the annual US-led NATO
Summit due to be held from April 2 to 4 in Romania.
The official alluded to the strategic partnership between European Union and India in a
global village to observe: "Global village is a relatively new concept exacerbated by
9/11 ... it caused a radical change in the way NATO views security."
According to the official, the buzzword in NATO today is comprehensive approach. "It
means that we need partners for accomplishing our mission in Afghanistan, we need a
full range of international actors," the official said.
"[We] need within comprehensive approach better concerted efforts of the international
actors so that our efforts become synergised and that we can achieve our goals (of
Afghans taking care of their own security) quicker," the official added.
The official left it to India to fashion the dialogue along the way. Currently, NATO does not
have a blueprint for dialogue with India. Therefore it does not have the usual partnership
tools such as Action Plan or Planning and Review Process.
The official sought to suggest that India could take a leaf out of Japan, which has a
framework of cooperation with NATO. "[Japan and its humanitarian agency] try to consult
with NATO before they put in place reconstruction projects," the official said.
In response to a query on an 'Asian NATO', the official said that "ad-infinitum expansion
of NATO across oceans" is not an idea that has been evoked, adding that the discussion
today is centred around NATO's global partners, and not Asian or global NATO.
"NATO remains an organisation of collective security whose primary goal is to assure
the security of its members but in order to assure our own security we need global
partners," the official insisted.
The dialogue, which started primarily as a mechanism to inform the neighbours of
Afghanistan about the NATO mission there, has been enhanced by high-level visits from
the NATO side to India.
Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee met with NATO Secretary-General Jaap de
Hoof Scheffer in New York in September 2007. They discussed the international security
situation, with particular reference to the situation in Afghanistan.
The NATO deputy secretary general visited New Delhi in April 2007. Consultations have
also been routed through the Indian Embassy in Brussels. The Indian ambassador has
met with the NATO Secretary General a number of times already.
Another source familiar with NATO told this newspaper that India's observer status in the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is not viewed with alarm by the European
allies of NATO.
The source cited certain Washington-based analysts as suggesting that the key to
NATO's survival as a credible military force may not depend on squeezing resources out
of existing allies but in looking for new ones elsewhere.
Those analysts believe NATO membership should be extended to any democratic state
that shares certain values and the list of probables includes Australia, Brazil, Japan,
India, New Zealand, South Africa, and South Korea.
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