NATO seeking pre-emptive missions

BERLIN -- NATO's military commander said Tuesday he sees the alliance taking on more stabilization missions, even pre-emptive missions in troubled regions to prevent them from becoming breeding grounds for terrorism.

U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones, who became NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe in January, said the idea would be to use forces to help stabilize areas and train local troops "in Western values and in Western ways of doing things" so governments gain the confidence of their people.

"You can either do nothing and wait for the threat to come to you or you can choose to be proactive and go and find them where they are, and I think the family of nations have decided to be more proactive and go where the threat is."

At a meeting of foreign correspondents in Berlin, Jones said he wanted to avoid specifics. But he did mention countries along the "southern rim of the Mediterranean" -- specifically Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria -- as areas where problems had been identified.

"The focus of interest for NATO for the foreseeable future ... is going to continue to be the greater Middle East, with increasing pressures from Africa, which, as a result of its large ungovernable spaces, is increasing to be a haven for terrorists, for merchants of weapons of mass destruction, and for people who are engaged in illegal international activities," he said.

Jones, who is also commander of the United States European Command, which includes most of Africa, said ongoing NATO naval patrols in the Mediterranean have significantly reduced illegal activities on the water, making land routes more important for terrorists to move back and forth.

"The merchants of these illegal activities have to find different routes, and those routes are what we're now worrying about, whether it's coming through the Balkans or through the southern rim of the Mediterranean and through sub-Saharan Africa, which is showing clearly some increase in activity in terms of those kinds of routes and the recruiting of terrorists of the future."

NATO countries agreed in a summit last year in Prague, Czech Republic, to streamline the alliance and refocus on threats from terrorists, rogue states and weapons of mass destruction. That summit also agreed to set up a NATO rapid response force of some 20,000 elite troops able to deploy within days against threats to the alliance around the world.