Protests and Political Tensions Mar NATO Meeting

By STEVEN ERLANGER and HELENE COOPER
Published: April 4, 2009
STRASBOURG, France — NATO leaders walked across a sweeping bridge over the Rhine between Germany and France to symbolize Europe’s unity on Saturday morning, but later in the day, masked protesters were battling the police of both countries on another bridge nearby, called the Bridge of Europe.
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Todd Heisler/The New York Times
RAW: President Obama joined NATO leaders to greet French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the center of the Passarelle Mimram bridge between France and Germany on Friday.
The protesters, who are a mix of anti-globalization and anti-military activists, set a hotel and border post on fire, while riot police used tear gas to keep them back.
For a NATO event intended to be without drama, marking the 60th anniversary of the alliance, the return to full membership of France and entry of two new members, Albania and Croatia, this summit meeting has been fractious both inside the hall and outside.
While President Obama has been greeted like a rock star, his calls for more European troops for Afghanistan have been politely brushed aside. And NATO leaders struggled to name a new secretary-general to replace Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, whose term ends in July.
They finally agreed on the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, but it was not easy, given strong Turkish opposition.
NATO works by consensus, and the European-favored candidacy of Mr. Rasmussen was publicly opposed by Turkey, NATO’s only Muslim country. Turkish officials said that Mr. Rasmussen was too insensitive to Muslim concerns during the scandal over the Danish newspapers publication in 2005 of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and that while NATO is fighting in Muslim Afghanistan, the symbolism would be all wrong.
Mr. Rasmussen has also said he does not think Turkey will ever become a full member of the European Union.
Efforts to sway the Turks over the leaders’ lavish dinner Friday night at a casino in Baden-Baden failed, as did a telephone call by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr. Berlusconi’s effort Saturday morning also held up the other leaders as they waited to cross the bridge from Germany and France. Finally, German Chancellor Angela Merkel set off with the others, leaving Mr. Berlusconi behind.
But behind closed doors, in an extended meeting that ran more than hour over time, the deal was done. Mr. Rasmussen, 56, is a center-right politician who has provided strong support for the American war in Iraq and NATO’s operation in Afghanistan, and whose government has sent fighting troops there, as well as to Bosnia and Kosovo.
Mr. Rasmussen graduated in economics but soon went into politics. He is a runner and bicyclist.
Saturday’s meeting began with niceties, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy confirming his country’s full reentry into NATO and President Obama welcoming Albania and Croatia, saying he expected Macedonia to join soon and that NATO’s door remains open to other countries.
But he made no specific mention of Georgia and Ukraine, whose increasingly distant accession to NATO has been a cause of a rift in Russia’s relations with the West. At last year’s NATO summit in Bucharest, President Bush pushed hard for membership accession for Georgia and Ukraine, but he was rebuffed by European leaders. Instead, NATO promised that both countries would eventually join NATO, without specifying any timetable.
A few months later the Russian army occupied the Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a move which most foreign analysts interpreted as a death knell for Georgia’s NATO membership, since the European members of the alliance are loathe to get into a fight with Russia.
While the United States has since then given lip service to continued support for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, Obama administration officials have indicated privately that they do not plan to put accession for those two countries at the top of the American agenda.
“The door to membership will remain open for other countries that meet NATO’s standards and can make a meaningful contribution to allied security,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Sarkozy and Ms. Merkel, the cohosts, praised Mr. Obama. “We are very pleased to work with him,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “We trust him.” On his first overseas trip, Mr. Obama has been the star of the NATO summit, with leaders jostling for alone time and photo opportunities with him, and the local press praising him for speaking in a language that is both direct and substantive.
Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Merkel praised the new American strategy on Afghanistan, but Europeans promised few new fighting troops for permanent deployment. A senior White House official said that the allies have pledged an additional 4,400 troops to Afghanistan, with 3,000 or so fighting troops. Most of those troops are linked to providing security for the Afghan elections on Aug. 27. Some 1,400 forces will help train security forces.
Some $100 million have been pledged by the allies for new training of the Afghan forces, $57 million of it from Germany.
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Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Strasbourg.