Background Briefing

Mr. P. J. Crowley: It's always good to have intimate press briefings as the secretary prepares to travel.

Next week, on Monday, the secretary leaves for a trip to Europe, as you know. He will -- the major focus will be of course the NATO defense ministerial late next week in Brussels. I think this is the first NATO ministerial under the leadership of Lord Robertson. But en route to Brussels he will have two speaking opportunities in Germany, to the Bundeswehr and at the Marshall Center, and also have a counterpart visit to Romania.

We have a very well-known to you all senior Defense official here to give you the high points of the secretary's trip next week. So with that, we'll turn it over to the senior Defense official.

Sr. Defense Official: Happy Thanksgiving to you all -- or to be soon. Let me do mechanics just -- and then I'll go to substance.

Leaving Monday. We're going to stay Munich as a place to RON for three nights, but the first substantive meetings will be in Romania on Tuesday. There are two kinds of meetings there. There's the Southeast Defense Ministerial -- I'll come back to the substance of that -- and then there are bilateral meetings with the Romanian president, the Romanian minister of defense, I believe the -- yes, and the Romanian prime minister.

On Wednesday the meetings are in Germany. Again, there are two kinds of meetings. He will talk to the German military in Hamburg, and then he will go to Garmisch, where the Marshall Center is, and he'll have an opportunity to visit the Marshall Center, talk to the people there, speak there.

Thursday and Friday the meetings are in Brussels. Those are the NATO ministerial meetings. On Thursday there are the so-called NACD, defense ministers' meetings, and they break down into a number of meetings, as I think you know: the Nuclear Planning Group, the Defense Planning Group, the NACD itself. And he'll have some bilaterals and then, on Friday, the Partnership for Peace defense ministers, and the so-called EAPC defense ministerials, and then leave for home latish in the afternoon.

Substantively, the meetings in Romania, as I said, are two kinds. The Southeast Defense Ministerial, as you may recall, started approximately four years ago. And this has been a fairly remarkable success because what we have done is we have been able to get four NATO countries -- that's ourselves, the Italians, the Greeks and Turks -- to work with five partner countries -- that's the Slovenians, the Albanians, the Macedonians, the Bulgarians and the Romanians - to work together collectively to try and establish cooperative efforts in this part of the world where historical cooperation has not been too substantial.

We established last year a peacekeeping brigade. And we have agreed upon, and the ministers presumably will approve, this time, two additional activities. One is an engineering-type task force, which will consist of on-call components from different partner countries that can undertake activities in the area; and second, a Crisis Information Network that is going to keep track of needs, requirements and be utilized in a crisis to respond to things like humanitarian disasters, natural disasters and the like. So it's an Internet-type-based network.

With respect to the Romanian side of the conversations, they of course were very helpful during Kosovo. We will talk undoubtedly about the overall situation in Southeast Europe.

One point that the secretary will talk about is how to bring all the efforts together.

And you all have heard about a variety of initiatives. The EU has a Stability Pact; NATO has the Southeast European Initiative; I just talked to you about the Southeast Defense Ministerial. We think those are complementary and we need to just work the implementing efforts so that NATO's effort, for example, which focuses on the Partnership for Peace, is consistent or coordinate with what we do in the Southeast Defense Ministerial. We'll talk about that with the Romanians.

In addition, we have been working with the Romanians on defense reform. They have a fairly good set of plans. You may know that we have the Marine Corps helping them establish an NCO training program. The first trainees are about to be graduated. I think they will graduate a little bit after the secretary's there. But it's been a very successful program. The U.K. is actually training officers there, so it's a joint effort. We'll talk to them about their military activities and what they need to do in preparation for their desire to get into NATO.

In Germany, he'll speak to the Bundeswehr. His focus will be, I'm sure, on the Defense Capabilities Initiative, so let me hold that speech because I'll talk to you about that in the context of NATO. In addition, we will go down to the Marshall Center. I think you're all familiar with the Marshall Center, but it's one of the really remarkable success stories. We started this about six years ago, about seven years ago, I guess. And we bring in both civilians and defense officers from the Central and Eastern European countries. They are trained in civil-military relations and issues like defense economics, how to do budgeting, how to actually run a military in the context of a democracy. Then they then go out and are active in their own countries.

We have gotten terrific feedback, both verbally and as a matter of fact because they seem to be taking senior positions, and this is a complement to some of the things we do by bringing officers here under the IMET program. But it's a concentrated activity that's run in Europe. We run senior courses for higher-level people, and -- I'm not sure what they're called, but then courses for sort of major, lieutenant colonel, colonel-level people in addition, and civilians of comparable rank. So this is a really outstanding effort.

And I think you all know that we have other centers around. For those of who traveled with the secretary on his recent trip to Latin America, there is a center here in Washington, the Center for Hemispheric and Defense Studies. There is a center for the Asia-Pacific area, which is cleverly called the Asia-Pacific Center. That's in Hawaii. And we just had the first and highly successful meeting of the Africa Center for Security Studies, which took place in Senegal. General Zinni was there, General Clark was there, people from OSD were there. And so we have a really worldwide effort in this area. And the Marshall Center was the first one of these.

I mentioned the NATO Defense Ministerial. The main effort, I would say, is on the Defense Capabilities Initiative. I've talked to you all about that before. You'll recall that was endorsed by the heads of government at the summit. It has five components that focus on mobility, deployability, precision engagement, communications, survivability and sustainability logistics. We've been working on that for the last several months. There will be a number of activities that will be approved. I'll let the ministers announce those. But there's a heavy focus on enhancing logistics.

And as has publicly been stated, for example, the Germans have been talking about the possible creation of a European effort with respect to mobility. Sometimes they talk about an air defense - I misspoke -- an air mobility, European arrangement. There are no specifics on that. That may be a subject of conversation, I assume will be a subject of conversation when the secretary sees Mr. Scharping in Germany.

There are a series of European meetings coming up, including a French-German summit. There is the so-called Helsinki meeting, which is the EU meeting, in which they will talk about the European defense capabilities. And it wouldn't surprise me if this was a subject of consequence.

They will also talk about their land forces and the like.

In addition, I'm confident that there will be discussions of national missile defense. There will be discussions of the SDI, the European security and defense identity. We will have, with the Partnership for Peace ministers, ways forward with respect to PFP. And there will be a variety of bilateral meetings, including, of course, with Lord Robertson, who, as correctly said, this is his first meeting as the NATO secretary-general.

I'm sorry. I left off one obvious area. Of course there will be conversations about Kosovo and Bosnia.

So let me stop there and take questions.

Q: What are the missile defense issues that are going to be discussed?

Sr. Defense Official: The Europeans are still in the process, I would say, of making sure that they understand what we're doing and making sure that we understand what issues they have. They will want to, at the ministerial level, make sure that they understand the technical parameters. They will want to make sure that they understand what our actual decision points are, what we have actually decided, and what is yet to be decided. They will want to know about the state of play with respect to the Russian reaction. And they will want to know whether they need to be physically involved, so to speak, one way or another. And then they'll want to report on the reactions that they have and on their publics.

There was some discussion of this by the secretary at the so-called Toronto informal -- that was in September -- because he had just, I think the week previously, but in any event very recently, at that time, had just talked to Marshal Sergeyev, and that was the first time, I believe, the secretary had laid out for the Russians the nature of the program.

Q: Do the Europeans, you know, other than expressing their opinions -- I mean, is there any action that they could take, I mean, either to prevent it or to -- on NMD, or is this just a forum for them to air their opinions?

Sr. Defense Official: I think that misstates the nature of the relationship; I mean, the Europeans are close allies. We want to make sure that they know what we are doing. Like anyone else -- I mean -- there are decisions yet to be made by the president. And so if there are important factors that they want to bring to the secretary's and the president's attention, the secretary will listen. This is not a situation in which we are going in and sort of looking for a check-off one way or another. This is a legitimate consultation.

Q: Of course, in the past, have the European allies been generally supportive of development of this, or is there skepticism because of the ABM Treaty?

Sr. Defense Official: There have -- (inaudible) -- I think it would be fair to say that, with respect to the Europeans, like every place else, there is a wide range of opinion. So I don't think you could take the word "Europeans" and just put a verb behind it.

Q: It's not an issue that you usually think of in terms of European input?

Sr. Defense Official: No. What we have had -- in the past for example, some countries in Europe are actively involved in their missile defense. And we have the MEADS Program, for example, with the Italians and the Germans; other countries are not actively involved. So I -- you know, the reaction, like everywhere else, will probably be differentiated.

Q: And from the sort of global to the local, you mentioned before that the Marines are teaching the Romanian NCOs. Is the secretary going to meet with any of those guys, or is he --

Sr. Defense Official: I am not absolutely sure of his schedule. I am confident that he would like to. He has an incredible, as always schedule. And so I simply don't know the answer to that right now.

I will say that, to the extent that you all are interested in, as you say, local stories, that this is really a great effort by the Marines and, for that matter, by the Romanians because they have really responded.

And, you know, I don't want to tell you what to write about, but it bears looking into.

Q: Is this like during Vietnam we had the thing called the "shake and bake" NCOs? Is that essentially --

Sr. Defense Official: No, this is much better than shake and bake. This is a full-fledged concoction.

Q: You know, like an eight-week course where you --

Sr. Defense Official: No. No. This is really a long -- it's a long course, and it's also a course that's designed to train the trainers, and it will take place over a period of time. And I'd look to the Marines to give you the specifics. But we asked the Marines if they were willing to do it about a year or so ago. They were. They have put a lot of effort into it. They really have done a superb job, and I think that we're going to get some very well-trained, you know, lower-ranking NCOs out of the Romanian military.

And then one of the key points we have made with all the Central and Eastern Europe countries is that one of the great strengths of the U.S. military is its non-commissioned officer corps. They were structured entirely differently because they were along the old Soviet model; they were not only top heavy, but officer heavy also in general. So this is quite a change for them and a very positive one, and one that will, in reality, really increase interoperability because you'll have the kinds of forces that work in the same way, make decisions at the same level and, therefore can really work much better together. I mean, as you well know, the U.S. NCOs take a lot of initiatives, are encouraged to take a lot of initiatives, are very, very well trained and do a hell of a job, and that's what we are trying to have happen in Romania.

Q: Just in terms of the Defense Capabilities Initiative, is the secretary going to be urging all three countries to spend more in terms of, you know, not only from the NCO organizational level, but spending more on, you know, systems that would increase the level of interoperability from a technical standpoint? What's he going to do in terms of that? Is there any --

Sr. Defense Official: Just to be clear, the Defense Capabilities Initiative is a NATO initiative; Romania is not yet in NATO, so it's not all three countries.

But the real focus will be with the NATO countries when he's in Brussels.

I think the way to look at it is, as I said, by category, as I was talking about before. And for example, in the logistics category, NATO has worked very hard in the last six months on what's called the Multinational Joint Logistics Center. And we've had -- and you can think of that as the logistics counterpart to the CJTF. And we've had doctrine developed. We've had exercises. And in fact, in Kosovo and in Bosnia, we have sort of a mini-multinational joint logistics center actually operating. So we will want to push that forward, continue that, but that's actually something that's been an achievement in the last six months.

Looking forward, we want to have more automated logistics. You're all familiar, for example, if you have a FedEx package, and it gets lost, you can call FedEx now, and they can kind of track it and tell you, "Oh, yeah, it's lost in Des Moines." It may not do any good to know it's lost in Des Moines, but it gives a sense of comfort.

But we want to have that same logistics automated-type system, because if you know where your materiel is, then you'll know when it gets there. And if you know that you have enough, for example, to share with, let's say, your Spanish counterpart, then -- and you have a sharing arrangement, which we have with all these countries, then maybe only you have to bring the package. The Spanish can bring - if you're bringing parts for one kind of system, then they can bring the ammunition. And what that does is it can reduce -- you can be more precise as to when it gets there. You can therefore have to carry less and have fewer inventories in the field, and you have smaller inventories because you have greater confidence that it'll be there.

I wouldn't want to say it's precisely like just-in-time inventory for commercial enterprises, because the risk of catastrophic failure if it didn't arrive is much greater in the military. But it's the same basic concept, and there are huge cost savings to be engendered and lots of interoperability to be gained by that.

Another area, which takes a little bit more time to do, but we saw issues about it, of course, is precision-guided munitions.

As all of you know, and the secretary has testified, you know, for the most part, not entirely, but for the most part, the U.S. had the heavy burden with respect to precision-guided munitions. The allies have agreed to acquire more; they are in the process of acquiring more. And he'll certainly discuss that and find out their plans. So that would be illustrative issues.

Q: Okay. And just in terms of that multinational -- the Joint Logistics Center, he's going to be pushing that forward or what?

Sr. Defense Official: Yes. And just so you're clear, that was an item that was specifically referenced in the summit declarations in May. We have been pushing it forward; he will continue to push it. This is one on which we've actually made pretty good progress.

Q: I wonder if you could say a little bit more about what the secretary is planning to tell the allies about U.S. intentions on NMD? I mean, we had this report quite recently suggesting that from a technical point of view things might not be ready for decisions at the time when the president has to make one or is expected to make one next summer. What is he going to say to countries which are obviously concerned about the whole eventual unraveling of arms control simply on the basis of pressing for National Missile Defense in the United States? In less than 10 words. Write on one side of the paper at any one time.

Sr. Defense Official: He's going to say the right thing.

Q: You've still got four words left!

Sr. Defense Official: A man of few words.

Q: I mean, clearly it is a major issue, and not just --

Sr. Defense Official: Yes. Let me try to -- your question actually had a couple of parts. On the technical side, I'm going to let the secretary speak for himself; he's actually more familiar with the program and its actual progress than I am. I have reasonably good knowledge of it. I am reasonably confident actually I don't agree with your characterization, but I don't want to get into a discussion of the technical issues. If we want to do that, we'll bring the right person here to -- if you're interested in that.

With respect to the overall situation, again, I'll let the secretary -- he'll have a press conference -- discuss what he did talk about.

But what he has said publicly is that, and I think the president said, that we do not believe that this would, to use your words, "unravel" the overall arms-control situation.

You will recall that the ABM Treaty itself has the provisions for missile defense. And you will recall that the Russians have their missile defense. So it can't be the case that having missile defense -- the principle is inconsistent with arms control because the very treaty that people are talking about, has that also.

Now, the secretary is completely willing to discuss it with his colleagues, who are the senior people who are in the government -- their concerns. And I am not going to anticipate that discussion. But I don't think anyone should accept, as a premise, that because we want to do defense, that that's inconsistent with arms control, particularly given that the ABM Treaty itself specifically allows for defense.

Q: Will there be any discussion of missile defense to cover Europe or the NATO --

Sr. Defense Official: (Inaudible) -- I can't anticipate what other people will want to talk about. The system that has been talked about right now is a U.S.-type system. And that's the specific parameters, if other people are interested. But you're -- we're really in the area of speculation, and I don't want to speculate.

Q: Just in terms of some of the acquisition issues that may be discussed -- well, for example, Romania and the Dracula helicopters; I mean, that's a part of -- do you know what's -- if there are any acquisition issues --

Sr. Defense Official: I don't anticipate that acquisition is going to be a major focus of the trip in any -- or anyplace, no.

Q: Okay.

Q: Will the secretary be expressing concerns about the way the European Defense -- you know, the European defense pillar initiatives are developing?

Sr. Defense Official: We are very supportive of the European Defense Initiative. And the reason we are particularly supportive of those is because the heads of government, and most of the senior ministers, have been talking about enhancing capabilities. And we are very, very interested in having capabilities enhanced.

Tony Blair, I think, was probably the first person to start - he is probably Prime Minister Blair to me -- Prime Minister Blair was probably the first person to start this off.

Prime Minister D'Alema has a quote to the effect that Europe spends 60 percent of what the U.S. does in defense but only gets 10 percent of the capability, and he wants to change that. The French have been very insistent on working hard and actually increasing capabilities. The Germans are talking about this. So what we see is that we have a lot of political momentum behind enhancing capabilities in Europe, and we want to encourage that. So we're quite positive about that.

Q: What about Russia? Will the Russians be attending this NATO meeting?

Sr. Defense Official: They are invited. I don't believe they have either accepted or rejected that. So, the best I know, we don't have an answer.

Q: Are they back in Partnership for Peace? They had quit earlier this year over Kosovo.

Sr. Defense Official: Well, they're back in working with NATO, obviously, because they're in Kosovo, amongst other places, in Bosnia. So in the actual peacekeeping operation, they're actively involved. And again, the reports that I've gotten is not only they're actively involved, but they're really very professional, doing a very good job. I don't want to give you a wrong answer. I'll try and find out for you what they've done, actually, in the exercise area. But in the most important area, which is actual operations, they're there.

Q: This is three nights in Munich and two nights in Brussels?

Sr. Defense Official: Yes. (Pause.) I'm sorry, three nights in Munich and one night in Brussels. We'll come home on Friday.

Thanks.

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