NATO secretary-general to meet with Bush

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, fresh from a visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, is in Washington for talks about matters including the NATO chief's wish for closer relations between the alliance and Russia.

President Bush and de Hoop Scheffer also were likely to discuss on Friday the alliance's stepped-up role in fighting the Taliban militia in southern Afghanistan and the 26-nation organization's summit next month in Latvia.

De Hoop Scheffer said he wanted to deepen the relationship between Moscow and NATO because of Russia's importance to solving many conflicts. "Russia's active participation for the solution of many conflicts is essential," de Hoop Scheffer told Putin.

Russia signed a partnership agreement with NATO in 2002, outlining cooperation in counterterror, nonproliferation, peacekeeping and other fields. At the same time Putin's government has continued to make public his opposition to the alliance's eastward expansion.

That expansion has included the absorption of countries that were part of the former Soviet Union — the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — and former members of NATO's Cold War nemesis, the Warsaw Pact — Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania.

De Hoop Scheffer and Bush were expected to review the progress of the alliance's mission in Afghanistan. Some 32,000 NATO-led troops are serving in the most dangerous areas of the insurgency-wracked nation.

NATO expanded its mission this year from the relatively stable north and western parts of the country to far more dangerous areas in the south, where Taliban militia have been most active since a U.S.-led coalition drove them from the seat of power, Kabul, in 2001.

De Hoop Scheffer, a former Dutch foreign minister, said Afghanistan is NATO's most important mission and has urged the world to remain engaged there. He said stability in Afghanistan has not only a military component but also a civic and developmental dimension.

De Hoop Scheffer and Bush were also expected to discuss a NATO summit next month in Riga, Latvia, to discuss strengthening and transforming the alliance to meet 21st century security challenges. The summit will not deal with the alliance's expansion, although some candidate countries say NATO should send a signal at the summit of a willingness to expand the alliance further.

A NATO summit in Washington in 2008 is expected to take up the question of membership bids. Among countries seeking to join are the Balkan states Albania, Croatia and Macedonia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

The Riga meeting is expected to discuss strengthening relations with democracies such as Australia, New Zealand and Japan. This move is favored by the United States, Britain and some other members but opposed by France, which objects to the alliance's taking on a global dimension.

De Hoop Scheffer has said the trans-Atlantic security concept needs to be re-evaluated because of international terrorism, which he has called a "threat without a face."

He said NATO has no desire to play the world's policeman but is the right tool for an international security partnership.

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