BRUSSELS 3-4 Dec NATO foreign ministers meet

NATO foreign ministers will tackle the priorities of the Alliance's new Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, at their December meeting. They include assistance to Afghanistan and troop training there, improving relations with Russia and partner Muslim nations, and NATO's new push to define its purpose -- the Strategic Concept for the Alliance. The ministers' work on the Secretary-General's priorities will be the backbone of the NATO summit agenda in 2010.

NATO's new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan makes winning over the population a higher priority than killing insurgents, but the resurgence of the Taliban is complicating the effort. Significant number of civilianians are dying in the crossfire and as a result of United States airstrikes, and Afghans are angry at both NATO and Washington. A disputed election in Afghanistan in August that is likely to leave Mohamad Karzai at the helm without enough legitimacy to unite the country against the insurgency, further complicating the humanitarian and reconstruction aspects of the NATO mission.

As was agreed at the recent Strasbourg-Kehl Summit, NATO has recently decided to reengage Russia, which remains incensed by NATO's enlargement push into former Soviet countries and satellites that began more than a decade ago. US plans for a missile shield in Central Europe, and last year's war between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia have exacerbated the tensions. At his first news conference as NATO chief, on Aug 1, Rasmussen said he hoped for a "true strategic partnership" with Russia and called for active practical cooperation with Moscow on Afghanistan, international terrorism, piracy and nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Russia's NATO envoy, Dmitry Rogozin, responded, saying he hoped "to see a predictable partner in the new NATO secretary general."

The Strategic Concept for the Alliance project, unveiled in Jul 2009, will define how it relates to the rest of the world as part of the security community, and at NATO’s role in addressing new threats and challenges. The present Strategic Concept was approved at the Washington Summit in 1999.

NATO foreign ministers meeting in Hungary in 2008 were given the task of making the case for or against Membership Action plans, the first step towards NATO membership, for Georgia and Ukraine. The main obstacles are diplomatic: after the April NATO-Russia summit in Bucharest, Russia's government promised to fight NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine in every possible way. Moscow has threatened punitive measures if Georgia and Ukraine continue to look to the West.

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