Czech Prime Minister visits NATO

NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer

Press point with NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Mr. Stanislav Gross

Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, the Prime Minister and the Secretary General will make brief opening statements and then go to your questions. Secretary General.

de Hoop Scheffer: Ladies and gentlemen, it was a great pleasure and a privilege to meet for the first time the new Czech Prime Minister Gross and we had, as it goes in these meetings, discussion on a wide range of topics; of course, the commendable Czech participation in different operations. We discussed NATO transformation, political transformation, military transformation; the different operations, as I said, where the Czech Republic is involved. It's an active Ally, it's a reliable Ally.

I have, of course, wishes Prime Minister Gross all the success in the many challenges he is facing in the Czech Republic. At the same time, which is my responsibility, and I do with these visits, I have voiced some worry about the way the Czech defence budget is developing. I would hope that in the discussions in the Czech Republic about the budget in general, defence will not be neglected.

You know, and I've said this before, standing in front of this microphone, that I think there is a tendency with many Allies that defence budgets are on the down slope, and that is not good if you see how much the demand to NATO increases, if you see what operations NATO is performing.

Once again, I'm saying this, commending the Czech Republic, for instance, leading the CBRN Battalion; an important contribution to the protection of the Olympic Games in Athens and the Paralympic Games quite recently. But on the whole I think the Czech Republic and in other Allies, there is a tendency of forgetting too much about defence. And you can't restructure defence forces without adequate finances, and NATO cannot keep up its operations when defence budgets are going down.

So we had an open and frank discussion about this. I fully realize, again, the pressures and the challenges on a prime minister, because you have infrastructure, health, social affairs, education, in any nation, also in the Czech Republic, but my plea to the Prime Minister Gross was do not forget defence. Pay attention to defence, and see that you can keep up to your commitments.

We'll certainly meet frequently in the future again. The Czech Republic is participating in Kosovo; will participate, is participating in SFOR, will participate in Operation Althea; is active in many other fields. I mentioned the CBRN Battalion.

So we had a good, open and frank conversation and again, once again, Prime Minister, a warm welcome here to NATO.

Interpreter: 2 minutes 10 secends (2:40- 4:50)

Stanislav Gross: Now, I can be very brief after this very concise explanation of what our meetings was about.

Now of course, I said that the Czech Republic is very proud and takes it very seriously, and as a great sign of honour that it can be part and parcel of this community of nations that formed the Alliance.

And as for our commitments, the Czech Republic has honoured and will continue to honour these commitments that we have taken onboard with our accession to NATO.

And of course, what we shall be having it's some kind of a restructuring. And that restructuring will mean in practical terms that we shall concentrate on that region which is our priority from the political and strategical point of view, and that is the region of the Balkans.

And especially in the KFOR mission we are counting upon a strengthening of our commitment. And we have, of course, pledged with the Secretary General to remain in very close contact and to seek future opportunities to have such discussions and more in-depth discussions, especially in situations where there might be some problems.

And I must say in conclusion that ours was a very open and a very friendly meeting, as a meeting between allies should be.

Questions and answers

Q: (Speaking in Czech)... And this is the question for General Secretary, I wonder please do you have some NATO opinion regarding the negotiations with Turkey. I'm of course talking about the European Union and membership in Turkey.

Gross: Now, we haven't mentioned that issue in our discussions, but as for the position of the General Secretary I will definitely have the pleasure of giving him the floor on this.

de Hoop Scheffer: I can imagine. No, my answer is that NATO, of course, does not have an official position on the negotiations which are, in essence, between the European Union and Turkey leading up to the decision during the summit in December. I can only say that Turkey is, for decades, highly trusted and very valued ally of the NATO Alliance.

On your question, NATO does not have an official position.

I have my personal opinion, but for that one you could dig in the archives and find out what my personal opinion is, but that's not relevant for NATO.

Q: (inaudible), News Agency of Ukraine. So far good relations with neighbours are important both for NATO and Czech Republic, so the question is, if you discussed the evolution of the Ukrainian stance towards NATO during your meeting and what could be your reaction to the pre-election disputes, like we see some disputes in there?

de Hoop Scheffer: We have underlined the great importance of NATO's partnerships and of course, Ukraine is a strategic partner of NATO. And NATO has, as you know, the action plan with Ukraine, and what is the action plan about? It's about values, like NATO, the Atlantic Alliances, the Prime Minister will see. So what can we expect and what can I say upon your question? That is, that based on that action plan we expect free and fair elections. We expect no harassment of the media. We expect free access to the media of all the candidates. We expect no harassment of candidates.

In other words, we expect adherence to the values which NATO stands for but which are also embedded in the NATO-Ukraine action plan. And that is a message, when I paid my visit to Kiev, I of course delivered in Kiev as well, and I'm delivering that message because I consider Ukraine a strategic part of NATO and a very important country indeed.

Let's have free and fair elections, let's have no harassment. Let's have equal access to the media, and let everybody say Ukraine is showing that it adheres to the values which are also embedded in the Ukraine-NATO relationship.

Q: Paul Ames from the Associated Press. I'd like to ask the Prime Minister if Czech troops will participate in the NATO training mission which is being planned for Iraq. And I'd like to ask the Secretary General how you hope to overcome the differences which have emerged in the Military Committee over the scale of that operation?

Gross: As I already said, we stand by our commitments and the commitments we have made in this sphere will be commitments that we shall really respect.
And we also react to topical situations and at present we have requested our Parliament to prolong the stay of our military police forces that are in Iraq training the Iraqi police.

Because the original idea was to end this mission by the end of this year, by the end of 2004 and now it is planned to prolong the stay of our military police for them to be able to stay till after the elections in Iraq.

In general terms we believe that the decision of NATO to strengthen the training aspect and the aspect of the planning and helping the Iraq forces to be sustainable in the longer run is the good way forward.

And it definitely helps to come closer to a time when the Iraqi people and Iraqi forces will be able to take care of their own security as well.

We also have a mission of police forces in Jordan where Iraqi policemen are being trained. And those Czech forces in Jordan will continue to be present there and to continue with the training for the entire year 2005.

And what's more, the Czech army has also, and the Czech side has also put aside some training capacities in the spot in the Czech Republic that we want to put... that we want to offer to the Iraqi forces in order to enable their training in the Czech Republic.

So in short, we consider this to be a good policy and we want to help in carrying it out.

de Hoop Scheffer: Let me say that the Military Committee, as you know, is at the moment preparing the so-called concept of operations. It will finish that very soon. Then it will go to the North Atlantic Council, which will also finish its business fairly soon. And as far as the numbers are concerned, they will be sufficient.

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