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Speech by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Spring Session.

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M2 PRESSWIRE-31 May 2005-NATO: Speech by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Spring Session(C)1994-2005 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

RDATE:31052005

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It gives me great pleasure to appear before your Assembly again. And it is a great pleasure, also, to be back in Ljubljana, barely one year after Slovenia joined the ranks of our Alliance and the European Union, and at a time when it holds the Chairmanship-in-Office of the OSCE.

Slovenia's spectacular transformation over the past fifteen years cannot be seen in isolation from NATO's own success - both in bringing peace and stability to the wider Balkan region, and transforming from a Cold War alliance into a modern, 21st century security organisation.

NATO remains committed to helping all the countries of South-East Europe to follow in Slovenia's footsteps. We are working closely with Albania, Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (1) in the context of our Membership Action Plan. We are holding out the prospect of enhanced cooperation with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro - provided they meet certain conditions, notably full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. And during this critical period for the future of Kosovo we maintain a robust troop presence there, while we continue to engage in the Contact Group and to support the Standards Implementation Process. This is as necessary as ever at a moment where the international community begins to address what lies at the heart of the Kosovo question : the fulfilment of standards, and then possibly Kosovo's status.

But while our commitment to the Balkans endures, NATO has also had to turn its attention to a number of serious challenges beyond this region, and even beyond this continent. Today, we are no longer a "eurocentric" alliance - we can no longer afford to be. Instead of a geographical approach to security, we now take a functional approach - dealing with problems wherever and whenever they emerge, from our anti-terrorist naval operation in the Mediterranean to our training mission in Iraq. That requires a major overhaul of our military capabilities. And it requires a new level of cooperation with other nations...

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