Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, The Copenhagen Voice, 4 May 2009

NATO’s continued relationship with Russia is important and NATO and Russia need each other, NATO’s Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said today.

Scheffer, who will be succeeded as Secretary-General on 1 August by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark’s former Prime Minister, met the new Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, at the Prime Minister’s official residence, Marienborg.

“The NATO-Russian partnership is an important one,” Scheffer told journalists. “Russia cannot do without NATO and NATO cannot do without Russia. This is true despite the fact that they criticise a NATO exercise in Georgia which is a Partnership for Peace exercise hosted by Georgia. And despite the fact that we have differences, that we do not like to see Russian forces patrolling non-existent borders on Georgian territory, the bottom line is NATO needs Russia and Russia needs NATO.”

With NATO deporting Russian spies and Russia saying it will retaliate, and with comments by Dmitri Rogosin, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, that “there can be no talk of progress in the relationship” between NATO and Russia if NATO does not apologise for its condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Georgia, the road ahead for the new Secretary-General seems to be very rocky.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer nevertheless said that NATO will be in good hands under Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

He added that giving NATO new strategic concepts and bringing the alliance back to a number of fundamentals about its core responsibility, solidarity and visions were among the tasks of the new NATO Secretary-General before the next NATO summit.

Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Scheffer “have discussed NATO businesses and focused on Denmark’s contribution – Danish troops are doing a great job in a challenging situation,” Scheffer said.

“I have thanked the Secretary-General for his work during his challenging time in office and for his tremendous efforts and good results in the job,” the Prime Minister said. “I repeated our very strong commitment to be in Afghanistan. If you compare our contribution with the size of our country, our economy and our military forces, I guess you can say we are one of the leading contributors. It is up to the military leaders to decide what kind of contribution we should have.”

Scheffer also met with Minister of Foreign Affairs Per Stig Møller.