THE NATO allies on Thursday stood ready to throw their full weight behind the United States in a military reprisal for terrorist attacks that demolished the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon in Washington.
Meeting at their heavily guarded headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels late on Wednesday night, the 19 allies — including the US — took the action unprecedented in the alliance’s 52-year history.
They invoked Nato’s Article Five, under which an attack on one is to be treated as an attack on all.
In a powerful show of solidarity with the US, the 19 ambassadors voted to open the way for America’s European allies to support any US military action against overseas perpetrators of the attacks.
”The council agreed that, if it is determined that this attack was directed from abroad against the United States, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article Five of the Washington Treaty,” a Nato statement said.
The Washington Treaty of April 1949, a product of the early days of the Cold War, is the document on which the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) is founded.
China reacted quickly, but ambiguously, to the decision, saying it would not rule out assisting in any military action taken under a broader mantle, such as the UN, but said Nato should first consult countries outside the alliance.
”Any action taken will have its implications for other regions, so it’s better that consultation be conducted,” China’s vice foreign minister Wang Guangya said in Beijing.
”Nato is a regional military organisation within Europe, so if action is taken beyond Europe, it will have implications. So that’s why I think consultation is needed,” he said.
Nato Secretary General George Robertson, speaking after Wednesday night’s unanimous decision, told reporters: ”The United States is still assessing the evidence that is available (and) they are the ones who obviously can make that judgement” about who carried out the attacks.
”They have not yet reached a judgement as to who did it, and why they did it,” he said.
”What the allies are saying is what they did was unacceptable, barbaric, and we stand today in solidarity with the United States,” he said.
Speaking in Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the decision in Brussels put Nato in a position to invoke the full authority of Article Five at short notice.
Once it is invoked, he said, the United States would, for example, be able to get instant permission from allies to allow US warplanes to fly through their airspace to carry out retaliatory air strikes.
Elaborating, Robertson said: ”The country that is attacked has got to make the decisions and has got to be the one to ask for help. That is where it remains at the moment.”
The Nato action followed a massive show of solidarity by the European Union, which vowed to help the United States identify and ”punish” those behind the attacks.
”We will spare no effort to help identify, bring to justice and punish those responsible,” EU foreign ministers said in a toughly-worded statement after an emergency meeting here.
”There will be no safe haven for terrorists and their sponsors,” it said.
”These horrendous acts are an attack not only on the United States but against humanity itself, and the values and freedoms we all share,” said Belgian Foreign Ministry Louis Michel, whose country holds the EU presidency.
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said, ”Today, we are all Americans.”
European Commission President Romano Prodi recalled, ”In the darkest hours of European history, America stood close by us,” he said.
”Today we stand close by America.
”This was an attack on freedom and democracy and civilisation and humanity,” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said. – Sapa-AFP