November 20,
2006
Transcript DVC with PDAS Kurt Volker and Georgian Journalists
PDAS Volker: Good morning, afternoon for you I suppose. As you know I am Deputy Assistant Secretary responsible for NATO issues, Western Europe for EU issues and things like that. I’m very interested in Georgia as a country that has aspirations for NATO membership and we’ve just extended an intensified dialogue with NATO and we are happy to talk about the Riga summit that is coming up, the NATO summit in Riga on November 28-29 and address any questions that you have. What I would say about Riga is that this is an opportunity for the Alliance to pull together. We’ve gone through two major transformations at NATO since the end of the Cold War. The first one was going from an Alliance of the west sixteen members, deterrence against the Soviet Union to reaching out to engage and involve Central and Eastern Europe and we had ten new members added, and we had Partnership for Peace, Mediterranean Dialogue, Istanbul cooperation issues, we’ve now got twenty partners in Europe and Eurasia, seven in North Africa, four in the Persian Gulf. We had enlargement, which brought about 100 million new citizens into NATO territory and helped advance the process of democracy, market economy, rule of law, and security in Central and Eastern Europe and NATO had to tackle issues like ethnic conflicts in the Balkans, where we’ve stopped two wars and worked to stabilize the region and are hoping to bring it forward. So, the first transformation was the engagement and advancing of freedom in the Central and Eastern Europe and ending the division of it.
The second transformation is after September 11 where, instead of being focused on security challenges that emanate principally from the Euro-Atlantic area, NATO is finding that the security challenges that it needs to deal with are rooted principally outside the Euro-Atlantic area and these are terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, failed states, rogue states, and things like that. What you see is that NATO is now engaged in operations in places like Afghanistan, training Iraqi security forces, transporting African Union forces in Darfur, counterterrorism operations in the Mediterranean, and the delivery of humanitarian relief in Pakistan and the US Gulf Coast and engagement in the Balkans. So you had a transformation first for standing freedom and securing freedom in Central and Eastern Europe and another one that is focused on the new kinds of challenges we are facing at the beginning of the 21st century. What we need today the Summit in Riga for is to have the Allies pulled together behind this vision of a transatlantic community that is united and working together through NATO to address these common challenges. And to invest in NATO so that it’ll be strong and effective for the future. So we have things such as Afghanistan very high on the agenda at Riga, people want to make sure we are doing everything we can to help that operation succeed, and help the Afghan people. We have fourteen Allies, now it’s fifteen, I believe, investing in C-17 aircraft so that NATO has additional airlift. We are working very hard to get the NATO response force to its full operational capability. We are creating a special operations forces’ coordination center so that our special operations forces are more able to work together than they have been in the past, that’s something that we think is very important for future operations.
So, there’s a number of ways which we are looking to strengthen NATO, reinforce it for the future. It is a summit meeting of the 26 Allies; there are no partner counties involved at this summit meeting as there have been at many other ones, because it is really about strengthening NATO as NATO is looking ahead.
There will be a few things that of course are of interest to Georgia. First of all I believe that we’ll have a very strong reaffirmation of NATO’s open-door policy; where NATO is open to membership for countries that are European democracies, and that can contribute to the security and stability of Europe as a whole. And we have a Membership Action Plan with three counties currently, Albania, Croatia and Macedonia. We’ll be taking stock of that, and we’ll be, I believe, saying that NATO intends to invite countries for membership who meet NATO’s performance-based criteria at its next meeting, next summit meeting in 2008, so we hope to see some invitations in 2008, and specific reference is made to the Membership Action Plan countries. In addition to that I hope there will be a mention of Georgia and of Ukraine as having an Intensified Dialogue with NATO. In the case of Georgia, as you know, this is a relatively new step that NATO took by consensus at the Foreign Ministers’ meeting in September in New York and we want to see continued performance by Georgia as it works through democratic reforms, economic reforms, political solutions and peaceful settlement of disputes and defense reform, of course, and anti-corruption. It’s something we very much want to work together with Georgia on. I don’t see new decisions being taken at Riga that would affect Georgia, but I would see the process continuing of the open-door policy, the Membership Action Plan for those countries that are in that, working with countries in the Intensified Dialogue, seeing that very much as the continuing effort of NATO, one that we believe has been very successful over the last 11 years or so and one we think will continue to be successful. That’s sort of the overview of the Riga Summit. I would be happy to take any questions you have and if there are some specifics that I did not touch on and other areas, you may want to comment on those, too. I’d be very happy to take your questions.
Q: Hello, I am Giorgi Sepashvili from on-line magazine Civil Georgia, thanks for this opportunity. Actually you have talked about this, the Riga Summit but I am interested in what you can tell us. I would like to ask you more about what the NATO Secretary General said; he said there would be some signals voiced at the Riga Summit towards those countries who seek the NATO membership. Can you please outline in more details what the U.S. vision is, what kind of signals might be expected?
PDAS Volker: It is very much as I’ve just laid it out. We believe that the process of NATO enlargement has been a tremendous success, both for the countries themselves and for NATO. NATO as a result of the enlargement that’s taken place over the last ten years has emerged as a stronger and engaged alliance in the world. It has been able to take on many sorts of missions, it has the enthusiastic support of some of its new members, and it has created a stronger, more stable, more democratic, more prosperous environment for NATO itself by having new members who are themselves growing more prosperous as democratic market countries. Many of them have also joined the EU; I guess Bulgaria and Romania are due January 1, 2007. So we view that as a tremendous success, and we view it as a process that has not come to its conclusion. We have work to do, both in the Balkans and elsewhere as we see democratic reforms take hold and make a difference in societies, as we see market economic reforms take hold and stimulate growth, rooting out corruption as difficult as that is, defense reform, contributions from nations to common security for NATO and for countries in the region, looking at the global challenges that we face. So we see that very much a trend that needs to continue. We welcome Georgia’s aspirations for NATO membership and want to work together with Georgia to do the reforms that are necessary to continue its engagement with NATO and advance that engagement. As we said the first step along this route was taken in September with Georgia joining the Intensified Dialogue. I think we need to work through that for some time. A further step would be seeking a Membership Action Plan, which we will work together with Georgia on, and hope to see that realized at some point in the future, and I think the pattern in the past has been that countries that do the hard work themselves – democracy, market economic reform, defense reform, finding political solutions to conflicts, and peaceful settlement of disputes, relations with neighbors, all those sorts of things. We think back to Hungary in the first round and Romania and Bulgaria, and we think about the Baltic States; to the extent that the countries are successful in charting their own way and implementing the values and standards that NATO cares about, they advance their membership with NATO through those means, not their membership, but they advance their relationship with NATO through those means. And what were very difficult questions in the late nineties, about whether the Baltic States would become members of NATO or not, became relatively easy in early 2001 and 2002 because of the performance of the Baltic states themselves and realizing those principles and values that NATO finds important. Certainly they did not do it on their own, we worked with them and all NATO countries worked with them and we would assume the same with Georgia as well. So, there is a lot of work to do. And through doing the work itself we create possibilities for closer association with NATO.
Q: [a follow up question.] You said there’s a lot of work to do. Can you outline those priority areas in which Georgia should do more?
PDAS Volker: I’ll repeat the areas that I mentioned and this is not to criticize; Georgia has done a lot, Georgia has done a great deal. But, that does not mean that all the work is done. And for example, democratic reforms, and strengthening democratic institutions – Georgia has done a great deal. There’s more yet to do, the same with anticorruption, Georgia has really done remarkable work with anticorruption in the Caucasus, in the South Caucasus. I don’t think anyone would think that that work is complete, but a lot has happened. Market economic reform is going on very well, defense budgets, defense planning, and defense reform - I think there’s more work to do there, judiciary. And then also, it is very important that Georgia have a steady political approach to dealing with the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and avoid getting drawn into any kind of conflict over these areas or a conflict with Russia. And of course we urge Russia, to deescalate tensions with Georgia, and a number of steps that Russia has taken, such as the ban on the imports of wine and water, on closing Georgian businesses in Russia, on deportations, we’ve raised these issues at very senior levels in Moscow, and urge them to take steps to deescalate tensions, but that doesn’t really relieve Georgia of the responsibility also, the seeking political solutions, peaceful solutions, addressing these issues through a political strategy. I think Georgia’s own success, as a democracy, as a growing economy, as a stable country, as a country that’s making its way in closer association with Euro-Atlantic institutions and participation in the global economy, I think that will become a magnet and that I think that will help bring all these issues forward, because the separatist regions themselves will see that Georgia is an attractive model, if in fact it pursues that model successfully, and we need to continue to have through means such as the OSCE, vehicles for dealing with these breakaway regions and the people that live there through peaceful means through a political process.
Q: I am Koba Liklikadze, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Georgian Service: Thank you, Mr. Volker, for your time. I have two questions. First of all, at the end of October the United States reportedly set out an ambitious agenda of transforming NATO into a global security organization. Some European Allies have certain misgivings. What kind of misgivings could the NATO summit face in Riga? That’s the first question.
PDAS Volker: Do you want to ask the second one too?
Q: Koba Liklikadze: Okay. According to a British daily, confidential studies by NATO economists … Russia is seeking to build a so-called gas cartel including Algeria, Liberia, the countries of Central Asia and perhaps Iran. The study concluded that creating this so-called OPEC for gas will strengthen Russia’s leverage in dealing with Europe, particularly its neighbors such as Georgia and Ukraine. Do you know something in depth about this case?
PDAS Volker: Sure. I don’t, but let me comment on both issues that you’ve raised there. First off, concerning NATO as a global security organization, I wouldn’t think it was accurate to say that the U.S. came forward with proposals in October to achieve that. I would rather say that this has been a development that has been going on over time, really since September 11. This is the second transformation that I talked about. Because what we saw in 2002, at the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in Reykjavík, NATO decided that the out-of-area thing doesn’t really make sense any more. NATO used to talk about not acting “out-of-area”, whatever that meant. But as NATO was beginning to take on roles in Afghanistan, and thought that that was the right thing to do, everyone realized that “out-of-area” doesn’t really make sense, and since then NATO has been conducting very high intensity peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan and has some 30,000 plus troops in Afghanistan and has responsibility for security in the whole country. You have NATO training Iraqi security forces, particularly senior officers, you have NATO transporting African Union forces to get to Darfor, you have NATO conducting counterterrorism operations in the Mediterranean, keeping a maritime picture and challenging suspect vessels, sometimes boarding them, you have NATO delivering humanitarian relief because of the lift capacity that it could bring to bear quickly. So you have a NATO that really is engaged globally and as you do this, you find that NATO is working in all these different areas, NATO finds itself working with other partners that it had not previously been working with as closely before, such as Australia, or New Zealand, both of whom are now in Afghanistan, or a country like Japan that might be a contributor in other ways to some of the things that NATO is also contributing to. So, in terms of operations, in terms of geography, in terms of types of operations, in terms of partners that NATO might be working with, we’ve seen development towards NATO functioning in a global environment. Now what I think some Allies raise questions about, they don’t want to lose the transatlantic character of NATO. They don’t want to see NATO itself be a global organization. That’s not our ambition, either, and I think the way to say this is NATO is acting globally facing global challenges and working with its partners globally, but NATO itself remains a transatlantic organization at its heart and it’s not itself a global organization and I think that’s the distinction that we and the other Allies would all agree on.
Concerning Russia and gas, I am not familiar with the specific report that you mentioned. I just don’t know. I am not familiar with it, but I would say a few things about Russia and gas. One of them, I think everyone has observed that Russia has centralized control over its gas and energy industries and it is willing to use this monopolistic position -- as having centralized control --both trying to expand its control and you see that in the efforts to purchase downstream infrastructure in West European markets or Central European markets, and you also saw it as a matter of political pressure or economic pressure as we did last winter in Ukraine and Georgia when Russia shut off the gas. And this is a reason why at the G8 Summit this past summer, at the U.S.-EU Summit, at further discussions the EU had with Russia during the Finnish presidency, you see a lot of attention paid to reliability and security of supply. Can Russia function as a reliable market partner and at the same time diversify sources of supply and types of energy to diminish the power that this monopolistic position gives Russia? I don’t know the specifics about forming a cartel with Algeria and others alike. I just don’t know. I have not heard that, but I would say that there are issues that we are concerned about with Russia having this energy policy, this energy industry as a means of exerting political and economic pressure on Western Europe and frankly on the countries in the Caucasus and Ukraine and Central Europe as well.
I can add one more point since you said you are from RFERL. I did a conference like this on Friday and I think there was some misunderstanding and I want to clarify that. In a question from Armenia [reporter from Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe in Armenia], what I said is that Armenia and Azerbaijan and any European democracy has the same ability to enhance its relationship with NATO on the same basis that a country like what Georgia has done, and the basis that I was talking about there was what Georgia has done in terms of democratic reform, market economic reform, defense reform, anti-corruption, peaceful solution of disputes, things like that. So Georgia has been able to advance its relationship with NATO, gaining an Intensified Dialogue, and any country could do that based on the implementation of the same type of reforms and commitment that Georgia has done.
Q: Hi, I’m Kristina Tashkhevich from the English Language daily The Messenger. Thank you for your time. I have two questions as well. First question is: Do you think that NATO will still accept Georgia as its member if the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia stay unresolved? If yes, why? If no, please specify why? The second question: Russia insists that Georgia’s entry into NATO will seriously affect the regional security. What is your response to that thinking?
PDAS Volker: I think the first thing is that we certainly believe that every nation has the right to chose it own security orientation. That’s Georgia. That’s Central Europe. That’s the Balkans and so on. No one outside can tell a country what its security orientation must be. That’s the first thing. And Georgia’s clearly drawing a course towards integration with Euro-Atlantic institutions and we welcome and support those aspirations and want to see Georgia succeed. The second is that the ---I’m trying to think of the right way to say this. We think that countries that are democracies, countries that are market economies, countries that have stability domestically that are integrating in the world economy; those are good neighbors to have. They solve problems, democracies solve problems, things like emigration, things like extremism, things like smuggling, things like trafficking in human persons. These are problems that exist in many parts of the world. The best way to deal with them is democratic systems that provide opportunities for human advancement, opportunities for economic growth, and opportunities for building strong societies. That’s going to be a good neighbor for anybody and countries that do that are going to be good neighbors for Russia. What seem like intractable problems today, such as the frozen conflicts, what’s happening in South Ossetia, what’s happening in Abkhazia, we don’t think should stay that way forever. We think these problems should be addressed and they should be addressed on the basis on providing welfare and livelihood and opportunities for all the people in the region, whether they are Ossetian or Georgian or Abkhaz or anything. Human advancement and opportunities for people should go forward. And so as Georgia implements the reforms and provides a successful model, it can provide a way of advancing all people in the region, and I would say respecting Georgia’s territorial integrity. We hope that as it all happens we won’t be faced down the road with questions as difficult as they seem now, but rather we’ll see a Georgia that is succeeding, a Georgia that is a good neighbor to Russia, and finally I would add that Russia should not view NATO as threatening to Russia because what NATO is concerned about is the protection of freedom, democracy, market economy, stability, security for its member states and working together with partners around the world to build security and protect freedom. Russia has nothing to fear from that. In fact, NATO is already a good neighbor to Russia in places like Norway, the Baltic States, Turkey. We don’t think that Russia should be too alarmed by this. It rather should alter the opportunities for a country like Georgia to succeed and therefore strengthen the neighborhood as a whole. This perspective is not the way Russia looks at things today. And that perspective in the region is not going to change overnight. This is something we all have to work toward over time to implement successfully the kind of reforms and the kind of political approaches to the frozen conflicts that we would like to see.
Q: I’m Eka Kvesitadze from the Georgian national newspaper 24 Hours. To follow up on your answer to the previous question, I have two questions, the more successful Georgia is, the more disappointed and irritated is Russia towards Georgia. And why, what’s the reason to your mind?
And the second question, some days ago the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee endorsed a document supporting Georgia’s accession to NATO and Mr. Lugar said that it is time again for the U.S. to take the lead in urging its Allies to bring new members and to offer timely admission of Albania, Croatia, Georgia and Macedonia to NATO. What do you think, what does it mean, “timely admission?” And another question connected to this statement is how big an impact can the U.S. have on NATO’s old members who are resisting Georgia’s admission to NATO?
PDAS Volker: Several things are embedded in that question. First in terms of timing, we believe that NATO when it meets again in 2008 at the summit level should be prepared to take some decisions on membership invitations. Countries like Albania, Croatia and Macedonia have been in the Membership Action Plan for seven, eight years now; have made a lot of progress. There’s still some work to do. But there’s been a lot of progress and we think it’s time for NATO to be taking some decisions. Second, we don’t think that NATO should have an exclusion of anyone from its consideration. European democracies that are succeeding, that want to integrate and support a common security with all the other NATO members, we should take all of them into account. We should not be building walls. The role of the Senate is important in the United States. First of all, resolutions like the one you mentioned have been used in the past, and they help to show that there is broad support in the U.S. for moving ahead with the NATO enlargement process. And having that broad support is important; not least of all, because when the membership invitation is made, it requires the advice and consent of the Senate. This is effectively a treaty amendment, to amend the NATO treaty by adding new counties to it, and the Senate needs to ratify that. And so having that expression of early support from the Senate is very useful, very important. NATO does make decisions by consensus, so all the NATO Allies need to agree on any steps, and it is helpful to us to have a strong Senate resolution, we of course need to work with all the Allies to build a consensus within NATO about future directions, and I would say, that I think the U.S. has already assumed the position of leading on this issue within NATO. We are advocating an open and a forward-looking approach to enlargement, both in the 2008 Summit and beyond there. We were very strong supporters of the Intensified Dialogue for Georgia that was agreed in September. We also supported Ukraine’s Intensified Dialogue in 2005, and we want to continue to advance that process. And I would predict that we will be early supporters of Georgia’s Membership Action Plan at a point in the future as well. But, there’s a lot of work to be done based on the intensified dialogue that’s there before we get to that point. We very much expect to lead this process. We think it’s been a success for NATO and a success for all the countries concerned.
Q: 24 Hours – WTO issue, Russia’s admission to WTO. As we all know, that U.S. supports this process. What has changed? The U.S. had resisted that admission, and what has changed? We do not see any changes in Russia’s internal or external policy. We don’t know yet but the Georgian government has to take a decision whether to resist this process or not. Should we wait for a signal from the U.S. to somehow influence the Georgian government’s decision on that issue?
PDAS Volker: I would put it a bit differently than you did in your question. Which is that, WTO itself is a standards-based organization, a rules-based organization about global trade, and the U.S. had some trade issues to address with Russia bilaterally. So we said we will support Russia’s WTO aspirations only after we resolve trade issues we have with Russia bilaterally. So we spent a long time trying to address these bilateral trade issues. It took it a very long time. But we have recently been able to satisfy our concerns there and move ahead with a bilateral U.S. – Russia agreement, which paves the way for supporting Russia within the WTO. So, that is how we got there. It was not a matter of U.S. blockage per se; it was a matter of ensuring that our trade concerns with Russia are addressed first so that we’d be in a position to support Russia in WTO.
Q: And what about the signal for the Georgian Government?
PDAS Volker: I do not want to instruct Georgia’s foreign policy; Georgia can develop its own foreign policy. I would say that we’ve satisfied our concerns on trade with Russia and we will be working to support their membership in the WTO. And I leave it at that.
Q: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Should I follow up my colleague’s question on WTO? Regarding the WTO, Georgia’s insisting in a 2004 deal, that Russia should not trade with South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Do you think that’s a realistic demand on Russia?
PDAS Volker: I think I would take this a bit differently. I would focus on – if you are talking about South Ossetia and Abkhazia – what can Georgia do to promote the advancement of its own economy, its own democratic reforms, to create a sense of magnet, a sense of attraction, that Georgia’s economy can help the South Ossetian economy. Georgia’s economy can be attractive for Abkhazia. By creating a positive dynamic, I think you can take those issues forward. You know, Georgia suffers from economic pressure and an economic boycott from Russia in many areas; I’ve talked about wine and water, for example. I am not sure that arguing that there should be more boycotts on other areas or other people denied access to trade is the right way to handle this. I think the way to handle it is to try to provide a positive dynamic that helps everybody.
Journalists: Thank you for your time.
PDAS Volker: Thank you and best of luck
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