NATO Chiefs of Defence Take Stock of the Partnership Relations

Szöveg: honvedelem.hu / MTI | 2014. január 28. 9:00

The review of the partnership relations, the exchange of views with the military leaders of the partner countries is one of the main topics on the agenda of the two-day meeting of the Military Committee made up of the chiefs of defence of the countries belonging to the Alliance, to begin on Wednesday, 22 January in Brussels. Chief of the MoD Defence Staff General Dr. Tibor Benkő will represent Hungary on the sessions.

General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Genaral Knud Bartels (second and third from left)

The current chairman of the NATO Military Committee is General Knud Bartels, the one-time Danish Chief of Defence – thus at present Denmark plays an especially important role in the Alliance, as the Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO’s top international civil servant is Danish as well.

On Wednesday, the military leaders had an exchange of views about the situation of the so-called Mediterranean Dialogue (MD), and had separate meetings with the Israeli and the Jordanian Chiefs of Defence. Subsequently, they held discussions with the representatives of the of the non-NATO Member States taking part in the ISAF, the international armed forces in Afghanistan, and the prospective non-NATO participants of the new mission in Afghanistan following the ISAF mandate ending at the end of this year. In a separate session they deal with the relation system of the European Continent’s Atlantic partnership, and together with the Russian Chief of Defence, they take stock of the NATO-Russia military relations.

Albanian Chief of Defence Major General Jeronim Bazo and General Dr. Tibor Benkő

Besides the NATO mission in Afghanistan the second important operation is the KFOR, guaranteeing the maintenance of security in Kosovo, in which there are also participants of non-NATO member states. They will discuss the issues of cooperation and the anticipated future of the KFOR with the representatives of these countries. The question closely connected to the analysis of the ISAF operational situation, is the preparation of the new mission, launched from next year, focussing on training and advising instead of the combat tasks. The concrete planning of this has become an increasingly urgent task, while there are still some uncertainties around the regulation of the legal status of the US or of other foreign nationality soldiers stationing in Afghanistan from the beginning of 2015.

The NATO Transformation is also included in the agenda of the Military Committee’s session, and within that, the so-called Connected Forces Initiative – CFI and the “Smart Defence" – SD, as well as the introduction of the new command structure. The more rational organisation of the NATO defence sources among the Member States is meant by Smart Defence, and the Connected Forces are ordered to do more military exercises than before, namely with the termination of the ISAF-mission the possibility of the joint live exercise on a daily basis of the soldiers belonging to different nations will also stop.