NATO needs to clarify mission, says outgoing chief de Hoop Scheffer

NATO needs to clarify mission, says outgoing chief de Hoop SchefferBrussels  - NATO members need to reach consensus on which threats tie them together as they look toward the future, said outgoing Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer Tuesday.

"NATO cannot thrive as an organization which is trying to take care of too many individual threats at the same time, becoming a sort of jack of all trades, but master of none," he said.

"I believe we have allowed NATO to evolve in many different directions, but without producing a 21 century mission statement that make it clear to our public why they still need NATO and what it offers that others organizations do not."

Terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction are two threats de Hoop Scheffer sees, both of them more imminent than an invasion of a NATO country.

He said there is a sense that the easing of tensions caused by the Iraq war and the change of government in the United States means that all 28 NATO members are on the same page with threat assessment.

But, in actuality, most members have different views on what threats

"I, personally, am not so sure," said de Hoop Scheffer. "In my time as secretary general, it has been clear to me that allies have very diverging perceptions on the threats we face."

He cited different approaches to Russia and the ongoing operations in Afghanistan as two topics that, in some ways, divide the organization.

Part of the process of forging unity should be to restate NATO's joint defence goals, especially to its newer Eastern European members, he said.

On a separate note, de Hoop Scheffer called on NATO and the European Union to no longer allow tensions between Turkey and Cyprus to disrupt cooperation between the two groups.

Turkey and Cyprus have been engaged in a long-running dispute about the status of northern Cyprus. Turkey is a member of NATO while Cyprus is a member of the EU, complicating relations between the two groups.

De Hoop Scheffer is set to step down from his position at the end of the month to be replaced by former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.(dpa)