NATO Chief Warns West Cannot Ignore Distant Threats
Sun Jun 27, 2004 07:37 AM ET

By John Chalmers

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - NATO must tackle new threats before they "end up on our doorstep," the alliance's chief warned Sunday as leaders gathered for a summit at which the new Iraqi government will be offered training for its troops.

The transatlantic alliance, which was plunged into one of the deepest crises in its 55-year history by splits over last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, had to haggle hard last week to avert a public row at the summit over its training role.

"I expect that at tomorrow's discussions NATO will ... give a clear signal of our willingness to enhance our support to a sovereign Iraqi government," Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said ahead of the two-day meeting in Istanbul.

He did not trumpet the agreement on training, which is a far cry from the boots-on-the-ground role sought by Washington for NATO but blocked by French and German resistance.

Instead, he warned against Western indifference to insecurity in Afghanistan, where NATO has a 6,500-strong peace force, and the insurgency wreaking havoc across post-war Iraq.

"If we do not tackle the problems where they emerge they will end up on our doorstep," de Hoop Scheffer said. [P6: though this line annoyed the hell out of me when run by the Bushistas (given that the odds of being hit by lightning are greater than the odds of getting caught up in a terrorist attack) I must admit Europe has better grounds for concern than the USofA. Those two oceans aren't insuperable barriers but their still pretty dam good.]

"The international community in its entirety, not just NATO, cannot allow itself to see Afghanistan return to being a safe haven for terrorism," he told Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore daily.

"The same goes for Iraq, which cannot go up in flames amid general indifference. Because the entire region would be destabilized." [P6: Let's face it folks: the entire region IS destabilized by any rational definition (and most irrational ones).]