European Union" "
Following its decision to have recourse to the collective defence sanctioned under article 5 of its foundation Treaty, NATO has confirmed its acceptance of the American request that contingents of the Atlantic Alliance be deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the Balkans and in the United States. It has also agreed to provide intelligence support, air space for USA aviation and access to ports and air bases to the military campaign. In particular, NATO troops will substitute US contingents in Kossovo and Macedonia, while European radar aircraft have already been sent across the Atlantic to replace the US surveillance planes transferred to support the air strikes against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. This is the first time that NATO forces have been operationally used in American territory. The plenary session of the NATO Assembly held in Ottawa adopted a Declaration, underlining its support to the member governments to furnish the USA with the “ necessary diplomatic, political and military means with the objective of engaging the perpetrators of these outrages and preventing them from carrying out new ones against our peoples and our territories”. Secretary General Lord Robertson recalled that NATO is now the only organization “ able to respond to this new challenge“, in view of the still embryonic state of the European policy of securiity and common defence (PESD) and the inadequacy of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) to manage military missions of this scale. Robertson, however, excluded the eventuality, also in future, of the Atlantic Alliance leading the military coalition against Bin Laden and the Taliban.
