NATO chief on new era with Russia

Robertson: Joint NATO and Russian action against real threats

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- U.S. President George W. Bush, other NATO leaders and President Vladimir Putin are in Rome on Tuesday for a summit setting up a new NATO-Russia council. CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley interviewed NATO Secretary-General Lord George Robertson about the importance of the move.

OAKLEY: Lord Robertson, this Rome meeting is going to be a crucial new step forward for NATO welcoming Russia into a joint council with NATO. Is it really going to be anything more than a talking shop? One understands the NATO members wanted to award President Putin for his contribution to counter-terrorism, but there's been an arrangement with Russia before.

ROBERTSON: This has to be more than a talking shop, after all we've had one of them for the last five years. And although it's been quite useful, and producing talk when the alternative might have been worse, there are new threats that we must jointly face up to.

So the whole purpose of creating this new council where the 20 countries sit as equals is to look at those common threads, see whether there is joint action that can be taken about it and to implement joint decision as they're appropriate. And that is what I hope it's going to produce: real positive action against common threats to all of us.

OAKLEY: Positive action, but will Russia be able to veto anything that NATO plans in any area?

ROBERTSON: NATO will not be able to veto anything that Russia wants to do as an independent country and Russia will not be able to veto what the NATO countries are doing either individually or collectively.

The purpose of the council has nothing to do with veto, it has to do with building consensus where there is a common thread. You know the terrorists on the 11th of September last year clearly underline that they were as much a threat to Moscow as they were to New York.

And if we're going to tackle terrorism or the proliferation of these terrible weapons of mass destruction we'd be better to do that together than trying to work out plans on a completely separate basis.

OAKLEY: Are you convinced, Lord Robertson, that this new arrangement is going to give President Putin what he's looking for ... the added status that he's looking for? Quite a lot of his generals haven't liked the idea of him, as it were, fraternising with the old enemy. They'll want to see there really is something in this for Russia.

ROBERTSON: Well President Putin has made it clear that he wants his country to focus now on threats that are real and not threats that are imaginary.

CNN's Robin Oakley

Now NATO is not going to attack Russia, not now, not in the future, therefore, keeping arms and armies postured for some mythical NATO attack just simply doesn't make any sense. It's a waste of money, so this is an attempt to make sure that east and west are focusing on where the threats really come from.

From rogue terrorists, from rogue states, from the proliferation of weapons, all of these problems are common problems and I think that the working of this new council will show that when east and west are united then the terrorists and the terrorist states had better look out.

OAKLEY: This is a key year for NATO. In Prague in November you're possibly going to be inviting seven, eight, maybe nine mostly former communist nations to join NATO as new members. Of course most of those have pretty limited forces and not very extensive budgets. Will you be weakening NATO by taking on such a wide membership?

ROBERTSON: No I don't believe NATO will be weakened by enlargement. Indeed the whole experience of NATO has been in the past that increasing the number of countries increases the sense of stability and security for all and has not weakened NATO's resolution or purpose.

After all, we've got countries like Iceland already in which has no armed forces and tiny Luxembourg is a very strong ally inside the alliance at the present moment.

We're not going to enlarge the alliance in order to weaken it. That wouldn't be in the interest of the countries that are applying. So NATO has to remain effective militarily but also be a force for good and a force for shaping the security environment for the better in the future.

OAKLEY: Finally, Lord Robertson, you've said that NATO must modernise or be marginalised. To some extent, people would say that it has been modernised in the sense that the U.S. didn't use NATO for the Afghanistan war, not in a direct sense. How are you going to modernise NATO and are the European members of NATO, the European governments, going to cough up the money that is required in their defence budgets for you to be able to modernise it?

ROBERTSON: Well, NATO has not been marginalised at the moment, indeed NATO has got one of its busiest agendas in all of its 53 years from Article 5 declarations on the war against terrorism, Balkan peace support operations, right down to our discussions with the northern Mediterranean countries. So marginalisation is certainly not on our agenda at the moment.

But if we are going to be able to deal with the military challenges of the future, the terrorist states, like Afghanistan, as well as the terrorist elements, then we've got to be able to act very quickly. We've got to have mobilisable troops and we've got to have the right equipment for them.

That's going to be the big challenge and I believe that heads of state and government who will after all be meeting the Russians in these next few days, are now seized of the necessity to get that equipment, to build these capabilities, because that is the only way that we will retain our insurance policy for safety and security into the future.

OAKLEY: Lord Robertson, thank you very much.