US and European partnership must combat global terrorism

Date: 24/01/02

A SENIOR US official has called for the creation of a 'transatlantic legal space' to combat terrorism.

James J. Foster, deputy chief of the US Mission to the EU, said it was crucial that America and Europe continued to work collectively as well as individually to defend their shared values.

He hailed the law enforcement cooperation taking place between the US, Europol and Eurojust agencies in the wake of 11 September and claimed America saw the EU as the 'sine qua non' for mobilising public opinion across Europe.

'The US likes to work multilaterally,' he told a conference in Brussels organised by the Centre for European Reform and European Policy Centre think tanks.

At the same event, NATO director of press and information Jamie Shea predicted that the EU would play an increasingly central role in the rebuilding of Afghanistan as the war fighting came to an end.

'It's politically comfortable for the EU to do peace-keeping operations,' he said, but warned that these could ultimately prove 'much more costly' than the initial combat role led by the US.

In the long term, he said, the Union would have to consider changing the pattern of defence spending on its forces to avoid expensive overlap and foresaw a 'much larger role' in future for the European Commission in 'sorting out the division of labour'.

He added that military shortfalls in the EU were 'not purely a budget problem' - for instance, the Union could buy 6,000 precision-guided missiles for the cost of three fighter aircraft.

He agreed with Foster that the sharing of information and intelligence, particularly with central Asian states, would be 'more relevant than ever' for the EU and NATO, through its partnership for peace initiative.

MEP Erika Mann, chairman of the Transatlantic Policy Network, which co-hosted the conference, said the EU had to increase its dialogue with the Islamic world in general.

The aim of this would be to create understanding on both sides and to promote democratic values, Mann added.

James, J. Foster, deputy chief of the US Mission to the EU, has called for the creation of a 'transatlantic legal space' to combat terrorism.