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Powell to Attend His First NATO Foreign Minister Meeting
US Secretary of State Colin Powell is scheduled for a brief water-testing meeting on Tuesday with his foreign minister counterparts from other NATO countries on such hot issues as the US national missile defense system (NMD), a European security force and the peacekeeping force in Kosovo.
Powell, just out of a hurried tour of the Middle East, was in Brussels for the extraordinary foreign ministers council meeting, which is called by Americans as not just a get-acquainted session.
The Gulf War soldier would probably have to listen to some of the grunts from the European allies in the military alliance about the George W. Bush administration's decision to go ahead with plans to develop its NMD.
The Europeans were afraid that the 60-billion-US-dollar project could trigger off a new round of arms race between the United States and Russia.
The other issue the American diplomat would find his view differ from that of his European counterparts was the much- proclaimed European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) which requires a 60,000-strong army to cope with future crises in Europe should NATO as a whole decides not to handle for itself.
Fearing that the European force could ultimately weaken and even undermine the alliance by driving a wedge into the trans- Atlantic relationship, Washington has promised to support such a plan with the condition that the European force has to be subordinate to that of the NATO force.
Even though NATO guarantees the newly-founded European force access to NATO existing resources such as planning capacity, intelligence and communications, discussions on the details of ESDI-NATO cooperation and coordination have been slow and difficult.
France, for one, has been championing the concept of developing Europe's own capability of planning, intelligence gathering and analyzing, and telecommunications. The idea, secunded by some other European Union countries, worried the Americans who have feared that such abilities would finally grant the European force full autonomy.
Powell and other NATO foreign ministers were also expected to discuss the situation in and around Kosovo, where a NATO-led peacekeeping force (KFOR) was failing to contain armed provocation by ethnic Albanian guerrillas into southern Serbia.
Vojislav Kostunica, the new president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, has been urging NATO to alter the five-kilometer buffer zone between the Yugoslav province of Kosovo proper and the Serbian Republic. Only lightly armed Serb police can enter the buffer zone established after the 1999 NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia.
The U.S. secretary of state is also scheduled to meet European Commission President Romano Prodi later on Tuesday. Javier Solana, former NATO chief and now high representative of the EU common foreign and defense policy, will be present at the meeting.
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