Americans threaten to withhold NATO money

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The United States threatened on Thursday to withhold money for a new NATO headquarters and ban Americans from attending alliance meetings unless Belgium changes a law under which Army commander Tommy Franks was charged with war crimes.

The strongly worded comments by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld overshadowed a meeting at which the NATO allies said they had taken historic steps to streamline the organization and equip it to handle new threats of the 21st century.

In a news conference, Rumsfeld criticized a decade-old Belgian law that claims a right to prosecute war crimes committed anywhere by anyone. Rumsfeld said the United States rejects the assertion that Belgium has such jurisdiction, a point that other American officials have argued over the past two years.

"Belgium appears not to respect the sovereignty of other countries," Rumsfeld said, noting that Americans sued so far include Franks, the commander of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; former Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf; Vice President Dick Cheney; Secretary of State Colin Powell and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

'Absurd' suits

"The suits are absurd," Rumsfeld said. But they call into question whether senior civilian and military leaders can come to Belgium "without fear of harassment by Belgian courts entertaining spurious charges."

The United States "will have to seriously consider" whether to allow its officials to come, he said.

"Belgium needs to recognize that there are consequences to its actions," Rumsfeld said, and he added that the United States would oppose any further spending for a new NATO headquarters, which is still in an early planning and design phase.

Belgium passed the law in 1994 to deal with suspects from Rwanda's genocide who began arriving in the country. But the law later was used by political groups opposing various actions, American officials said.

The suit against Franks was filed by an attorney for a leftist political party in the name of Iraqis who said family members had been killed in the war.

Rumsfeld told Belgian Defense Minister Andre Flahaut during a meeting that he'd like to give the government six months to resolve the matter. A NATO diplomat later said that meant repeal the law or amend it to protect against politically inspired lawsuits.

Rumsfeld's surprise public comments came at the end of a day on which NATO took another step away from its Cold War past, streamlining its military command and refining plans for a quick-response force that can tackle terrorism and other threats around the globe.

The trans-Atlantic alliance also made progress toward improving Canadian and European armed forces to narrow the gap between them and America's high-tech military.

"This is a new NATO, a NATO transformed," said Lord Robertson, the alliance's secretary general, who has called the changes the most radical in the alliance's 54-year history.

"They profoundly reshape the alliance's military structures and greatly enhance its military capabilities," he told the defense ministers meeting.

It was the first NATO meeting for Rumsfeld since the war in Iraq. And U.S. and allied ministers agreed Thursday's actions showed the alliance had moved beyond divisions caused early this year by the U.S.-led war.

"The consequences of the differences of opinion over Iraq have vanished," said German Defense Minister Peter Struck.

Also, though some European nations did not support the war to disarm Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, all 19 NATO members have agreed they should be involved in postwar Iraq.

The alliance is helping set up a Polish-led peacekeeping force that will be sent to Central Iraq, while Americans man the North and British the South.

NATO was formed in 1949, largely to discourage the Soviet Union from attacking Western Europe.

The streamlining of commands is part of a military transformation officials believe is needed to shift the focus toward quicker, lighter units able to respond to sudden, unpredictable threats wherever they arise.

The defense ministers pushed forward plans to create a 20,000 strong NATO response force. A partial force -- the training regiment -- will be ready by October, officials announced. The full force will not be ready until 2006.

They also agreed to cut NATO regional and sub-regional headquarters by 40 percent. The old Atlantic headquarters in Norfolk, Va., will be changed into a "transformation headquarters" that will oversee the military modernization.

The allies also are set to agree this week on three regional headquarters in Naples, Italy; Brunssum, Netherlands, and Oeiras, Portugal.

Ministers also advanced efforts to strengthen military equipment among America's allies, some of whom lack such things as sufficient transport planes, precision weapons that played such a large role in the American-led campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and electronic jamming gear.

Pledges of improvements were made at a previous meeting, and on Thursday 11 nations signed letters of intent to lease planes and 10 to charter ships for deployments.