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LONDON (Reuters) - NATO's international credibility is at stake as its members make grand political declarations but then fail to produce the troops needed to fulfil them, the alliance's head said Friday.
"NATO's political clout is directly related to its military competence," Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a conference, lamenting how he continually had to beg countries to honor their pledges.
"I don't mind taking out my begging bowl once in a while. But as a standard operating procedure, this is simply intolerable," he said.
De Hoop Scheffer cited the alliance's role in Afghanistan as a case in point.
Currently NATO has some 6,400 troops in the country, of which all but a handful are confined to Kabul.
NATO leaders have pledged to beef up the mission so it can operate more widely, but have since been dragging their heels on actually coming up with the necessary troops.
"Missions such as Afghanistan present wholly new challenges in terms of generating forces. We have never done anything quite like this before and it should be no surprise that there are challenges," de Hoop Scheffer said.
"Whenever we enter into a political commitment to undertake an operation, we must have a clear idea beforehand as to what forces we have available to honor this commitment," he added.
He said he hoped the NATO summit in Istanbul on June 28 and 29 would not only resolve the Afghan troop problem but also push forward necessary internal reforms to the alliance.
In his most hard-hitting speech to date, de Hoop Scheffer told the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London that NATO's role was in the throes of revolution.
No longer could it simply defend its borders, it had to look far further afield to spot emerging threats to peace and security and nip them in the bud.
The demand for NATO is likely to increase, not diminish, in the future," he said. "NATO will be called upon by the international community to be peacemaker, peacekeeper, and the provider of security and stability.
"If we are serious about the need to project stability in today's volatile security environment, we must continue to make sure that our means match our ambitions," he added.
The former Dutch foreign minister said NATO's force structure also had to be reformed to meet the challenges of the new era of global insecurity.
"We need more wide-bodied aircraft and fewer tanks. We need forces that are slimmer, tougher and faster; forces that reach further and can stay in the field longer but still punch hard."
He also advocated a review of the traditional way of funding in which countries finance their own troop contingents.
This meant that those with greater means were called on disproportionately more often than their less well equipped counterparts.
"So can we deliver? The simple answer to this question is that we must deliver," he said. "We must make sure that our means match our ambitions. There simply is no other choice."
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