3 April 2008 (PR030408) For Immediate release
NATO PA PRESIDENT JOSÉ LELLO URGES ALLIANCE LEADERS AT BUCHAREST SUMMIT TO LIVE UP TO THEIR COMMITMENTSAddressing heads of state and government at the opening of the NATO Summit in Bucharest, José Lello, President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, today called upon Alliance leaders to live up to their common commitments to provide forces for the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. If they do not, he warned, the Alliance would become in effect a “coalition of the willing”. He added that failure in Afghanistan “would be failure not just for NATO, but for the entire international community, including the United Nations and the European Union”.
President Lello told the gathered heads of state that, "Together we made the commitment to provide the forces needed to make state-building and development possible. Together we decided to expand the NATO mission to cover the whole country. And together we must all now share the burden of those decisions.”
On NATO enlargement, President Lello said that the Assembly had long supported enlargement based on performance, and that NATO enlargement threatened no-one. On the contrary “NATO members are good neighbours”.
He also underlined the need for NATO to prepare a new Strategic Concept to take account of the dramatic changes in the security environment which have taken place since the current Strategic Concept was adopted almost 10 years ago at NATO 50th Anniversary Summit. Noting that this would take time to develop, he supported the idea of producing an interim statement, an “Atlantic Declaration” which would be a statement of the values, beliefs and ideas upon which the Alliance was founded. He declared that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly was ready to assist in preparing a new Strategic Concept and an Atlantic Declaration which might precede it.
Expressing his confidence that the Alliance could meet the challenges it faces, he said that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly will play its role promoting the values upon which our Alliance is based, by building a larger community of democracies, and helping Alliance leaders to continue to adapt the Alliance to the demands of the 21st century.
Mr. Lello will also represent the Assembly in the SummitÂ’s high-level meeting on Afghanistan gathering representatives of all the ISAF troop-contributing countries as well as key international leaders, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and senior officials from other major international bodies such as the European Union and the World Bank.
The Speech is available on the NATO PA web site at the following address: http://www.nato-pa.int/default.asp?CAT2=0&CAT1=0&CAT0=0&SHORTCUT=1494