Robertson attacks scandal of ‘lost’ army

Date: 11/09/03

By Martin Banks

NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson, has made a scathing attack on the alliance member states' failure to provide sufficient resources to carry out military operations in the world's troublespots.

NATO's 17 European members boast 1.4 million troops and one million reservists, yet all but 80,000 - currently deployed in the Balkans and Afghanistan - would appear to have gone AWOL (absent without leave).

"This is a scandal," said Robertson. "What are European taxpayers doing funding over two million military personnel if you can only use 80,000 of them at any one time?

"If Europe is serious about providing resources to carry out military operations, what we need are more trained, instantly available troops.

"Governments are forever screaming that their military forces are overstretched but they have simply got to be prepared to deploy more soldiers and resources."

Robertson, a former UK defence secretary who is due to stand down from his post in December, also branded as "shameful" Europe's air power compared with the US.

He said: "I am ashamed that Europe - this huge economic and political unit with one third of the world's gross domestic product - can call on just four military transport aircraft compared with America's 350."

Robertson, giving a keynote speech in Brussels last Thursday on the future of NATO, also described the current situation in Iraq as "very serious" but said no decision had yet been taken on what role the organization should have in the country.

"That is something for NATO members to decide but as yet there is no consensus on whether NATO should get involved in Iraq," he told European Voice.

Robertson, who will take up a post of deputy chairman of Cable and Wireless in the new year, told the audience, which included several former European defence ministers, that NATO was in "much better health" than its critics would suggest.

However, he admitted that transatlantic relations had been strained in the run-up to the Iraq war and that reaching a consensus over the issue had been a "back-breaking" exercise.

Under Robertson's leadership, the alliance has maintained peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Kosovo and helped appease a crisis in Macedonia that threatened to boil over in a new Balkan war. Looking back on the period since he moved into the job in 1999, he added: "NATO has been an extraordinary success story. Of course, its members do not always agree on everything - they never have and never will - but I believe the alliance is in much better health than its critics would tell you.

"NATO has helped bring peace to the Balkans and just recently has taken on a peacekeeping role in Kabul - not bad for a 'dying' organization."

However, he warned that, post 11 September, NATO had to adjust to a new world order.

"No longer can we wait for something to happen - that is too late. We have got to be prepared to deal with terrorist threats when and where they occur."

The Dutch Foreign Minister, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, has been tipped as Robertson's possible successor at NATO's head.

NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson, has criticised the alliance's Member States for failing to provide sufficient resources to carry out military operations around the world.