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NATO plans summits to map out its future shape as deployed operations increase
- Article Tools
| 06 December 2005 |
NATO is preparing plans for three major summits to further shape its future: one in 2006 in Riga, Latvia, to discuss force transformation; one in 2008 in Brussels, Belgium, to discuss further enlargement of the alliance; and one in 2009 in Washington, DC, senior sources in the NATO headquarters have told IDR.
With military commitments in five different crisis areas, NATO has "expanded its horizons and is now a much more flexible and a much more operational organisation than it ever was during the first 40 years of its existence", a senior US official in the NATO headquarters explained.
NATO's biggest operation at the moment is in Afghanistan, where it has deployed and leads the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
The US NATO official said: "We are now in the process of expanding ISAF's mandate, to implement a counterclockwise expansion of NATO's presence throughout the country. It started in Kabul, and, in Phase 1, it spread to the north, providing provincial reconstruction teams [PRTs] and assistance to the Afghan security forces."
To enable NATO countries to effectively and efficiently take part in operations such as these, military transformation is key and critical, IDR was told at NATO Headquarters.
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