BRUSSELS - National Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul said on Monday that the following NATO summit to be held in Istanbul would be a response to terrorism.
Gonul held a press conference in Brussels, where he attended NATO meetings.
National Defense Minister Gonul said that participants evaluated whether or not NATO's nuclear policy and structure of its force were deterrent enough for the requirements of the 21st century in the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) meeting.
Gonul stated that U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave information to the allies about efforts of the United States in this issue.
Level of current planning devices and operation of defense planning process were taken up in the Defense Planning Committee meetings, Gonul said.
Gonul noted that they were informed about the recent stage in new NATO command structure practice.
Afghanistan, Balkans and Iraq were also discussed in the meetings, Gonul pointed out.
Gonul said that ministers of ally countries expressed condolences over the terrorist attacks which were staged in Istanbul in November and noted that he thanked those ministers.
''It is our main target to make NATO's force structure a structure which can cope with threats against the allies. Our forces should have a deployable structure to fight against possible crises which may threaten our interests and security, on time and in an efficient way. Therefore, 40 percent of national forces of NATO members is targeted to be deployable. This figure should not be perceived as rate of soldiers wanted to be deployed outside lands of the countries. What is foreseen is that every country should extend a support to operations of the Alliance by 8 percent of their land forces and maintain this support. In this case, it is thought that 40 percent of the forces should be deployable when rotation, training and preparation of the units and their use in other duties are taken into consideration,'' Gonul said.
Gonul stated that NATO Response Force (NRF) was operational and its first exercise staged in Turkey was very successful.
Those exercises showed importance that Turkey attributed to change in NATO and its renewal process, Gonul said.
When he was recalled that NATO Secretary General George Robertson wanted member countries to give helicopters to be used in Afghanistan, Gonul said that Turkey would not give helicopters to Afghanistan but work on other possible contributions.
Gonul said that Rumsfeld used expressions supporting Turkey's EU accession process in the meetings.
Recalling that NATO considered terrorism a global threat and attached importance to fight against terrorism, Gonul added that the following NATO summit to be held in Istanbul would be a response to terrorism.
Gonul will return to Turkey after attending meeting of Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council on Tuesday.
(BRC) 01.12.2003