NATO HQ 20 mai 1999

Secretary General's opening remarks to Senior Civil Emergency Planning Committee (SCEPC) Plenary Today's Plenary takes place against the background of the Kosovo crisis. That crisis demonstrates the value of NATO's Civil Emergency Planning. Under the lead responsibility of the UNHCR, NATO has been working at the centre of the unprecedented military and civil humanitarian effort to deal with the refugee crisis in the Balkans. Over 20,000 NATO troops are now working on humanitarian duties in Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. They have helped deliver over 4,000 tons of stores, 4,600 tons of food and water, over 1,500 tons of medical supplies and over 2,600 tons of tents. There have been almost 1,400 NATO humanitarian aid flights to the region. Our present close co-operation with the United Nations on humanitarian issues is likely to continue. The UN Secretary General, in dispatching a high level mission to the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, has already requested that NATO should stand ready to provide support when the refugees go home. We will continue to provide as much help as is needed - for as long as it takes: we are preparing for all eventualities, and all weathers. This is the kind of responsibility that NATO must be ready to help shoulder; as we enter the next century the concept of international security will become ever broader. Today you will discuss many of these new areas - fundamental to the future role of SCEPC in the changing political, military, economic and social climate in which the Alliance now finds itself. As Chairman of SCEPC, I should like to open discussion with one or two reflections. Since the end of the Cold War, the Alliance has changed dramatically to adapt to the new requirements of the international environment. I have been particularly struck by the extraordinary success of the Civil Emergency Planning - CEP - programme of co-operation with the Partners: in fact, there is no individual Partnership Programme which does not include a substantial CEP element. Strategic relationships with both Russia and Ukraine have also been bolstered by confidence building ties developed through joint CEP activities. And, more recently, the Mediterranean Dialogue also began to draw on the potential of CEP. The success of the CEP-PfP programme of cooperation reflects where the requirements for stability actually lie in the changing post Cold War environment. The Euro Atlantic Disaster Relief Coordination Centre is a concrete demonstration of the climate of collaboration that we have created through our Partnership for Peace. It has played the pivotal role which has allowed the United Nations, the military and the civilian agencies to work together. But the Centre did not appear spontaneously. It came about as a result of five years of hard work on the part of the NATO CEP community, fostering dialogue and promoting cooperation. The New Strategic Concept, just approved by the Washington Summit, has confirmed the broad approach to security already adopted by the Alliance in 1991. The Strategic Concept makes it clear that the Alliance's approach to crisis management will include tackling humanitairan emergencies. The Concept states: "The Alliance is committed to a broad approach to security which recognises the importance of political, economic, social and environmental factors in addition to the indispensable defence dimension". The principles underlying the New Strategic Concept are already being put into practice in NATO's involvement in the Kosovo crisis. Our ability to rapidly adapt and react to the humanitarian disaster before us was a demonstration of the flexibility NATO will need in the next millennium. This flexibility will also have to apply to SCEPC. The fact that this Committee had already decided, even before the Kosovo crisis, to embark on a review of NATO CEP, fully testifies to your professionalism. The challenge now is to adjust the entire CEP machinery to the New Strategic Concept. Our primary mission will remain to defend the values that NATO was founded on 50 years ago: democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. I hope that in most cases this will mean working to prevent the kind of crisis we now see in Kosovo. But the New Strategic Concept will equip us with the means to react to the humanitarian, and other new, challenges we will face in the 21st Century.