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Biden's Munich role: Reinvigorate NATO ties
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Biden's Munich role: Reinvigorate NATO ties
By ROBERT BURNS and STEVEN R. HURST,Associated Press Writers AP - Thursday, January 29
WASHINGTON - Hoping for a fresh start with Europe, the Obama administration is sending a more high-powered delegation, led by Vice President Joe Biden, to Germany for an annual talkfest on foreign and defense policy.
In the Bush years, the gathering was sometimes a showcase for U.S.-European friction.
Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and deeply versed in U.S. policy abroad, also will push allies to hoist a greater share of the diplomatic, military and economic burdens confronting President Barack Obama.
The United States usually sends its secretary of defense because military issues have been at the center of the conference agenda. But the White House announced on Tuesday that Biden would lead this year's delegation, accompanied by Obama's national security adviser, retired Gen. James Jones, who has attended past conferences as a senior Pentagon official and later as the top NATO commander.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the only Bush administration holdover who attended each of the last two years, is not going.
"This is a break from tradition but one that the secretary thinks sends the perfect message to Europe that this new administration is committed at the highest levels to continue to work with our European allies on security matters," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said in an interview Wednesday.
That rationale fits an emerging pattern for the Obama administration: making an effort to break early with former President George W. Bush's foreign policy approaches. Other examples include sending a senior envoy, George J. Mitchell, quickly to the Mideast to engage on the Arab-Israeli conflict; naming a special representative, Richard Holbrooke, to attend more closely to the problem of instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and answering global outrage over the Guantanamo Bay prison by ordering its closure.
The Munich security conference, held nearly every year since 1962, draws hundreds of defense and foreign policy experts, plus prominent lawmakers and senior government officials across Europe and beyond. The forum's organizer has announced that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will participate, as well as the secretary general of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
The gathering is Feb. 6-8.
A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss policy decision-making, said Biden also would call for allies to join the new administration as it confronts the range of international problems.
"Biden will carry the message that we expect them to help carry the load, not just as NATO in Afghanistan, but with all the other problems _ Iran, Russia, Iraq, the Middle East, the economy and so forth," the official said.
At the conference two years ago, for example, then-Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed U.S. policy for inciting other countries to seek nuclear weapons to defend themselves from what he said was an "almost uncontained use of military force."
Last year, Gates told the gathering that NATO's survival was at stake in the debate over how the U.S. and Europe should share the burden of fighting Islamic extremism in Afghanistan. Since then, there has been little movement on gaining greater NATO involvement in the fight against the Taliban militants who have retaken major parts of the country.
Obama has promised more U.S. forces for Afghanistan, and Gates told a Senate panel Tuesday that the Pentagon could send two more brigades to Afghanistan by late spring and a third brigade by late summer to try to salvage a war that has ground to a grim standoff.
The U.S. is considering doubling its troop presence in Afghanistan this year to roughly 60,000, still less than half the number currently in Iraq.
NATO countries have been reticent to increase their forces in the increasingly bloody fight in Afghanistan, and Biden will be trying to change minds as he hopes to mend relations with major U.S. European allies. Most of them, except Great Britain, sharply opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and were deeply offended when former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld described traditional allies like Germany as "old Europe."
With Afghanistan and the Mideast on the agenda, the U.S. general responsible for those regions, David Petraeus, is planning to attend the conference. Typically the only regional U.S. commander to participate is the commander of U.S. European Command, currently Gen. John Craddock.
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