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Rumsfeld warns of threat from Iran

PHOTO: APN

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned on Wednesday about Iran's nuclear activities and called on the Atlantic alliance to find new ways of combating "the nexus of terror and weapons of mass destruction," which he called the biggest threat facing the countries of both "old" and "new" Europe.

Speaking in this resort town in the Bavarian Alps, Rumsfeld struck a mostly conciliatory tone, shaking hands warmly with the German defense minister, Peter Struck, who was here to greet him.

"Like a family, sometimes we don't agree on everything and sometimes we have debates, but when we are threatened or challenged, we need to come together, as we did after Sept. 11," Rumsfeld said.

One such threat, Rumsfeld said to a group of students before his formal remarks, is Iran's development of nuclear weapons, which Washington says Tehran is doing under the guise of a civilian nuclear program.

"The intelligence community in the United States and around the world currently assess that Iran does not have nuclear weapons," he said. "The assessment is that they do have a very active program and are likely to have nuclear weapons in a relatively short period of time."

"Sometimes we don't agree on everything ... but when we are threatened or challenged, we need to come together."

Donald Rumsfeld, US secretary of defense

Still, Rumsfeld exhibited some of his customary combativeness, reiterating his now famous reference to "old" and "new" Europe, and made it clear that the countries of "new" Europe -- especially those that belonged to the Soviet bloc that have joined the Atlantic alliance -- understand what he called "the new threat" better than some of the countries of "old" Europe.

"The distinction between old and new in Europe today is not really of a matter of age or size or even geography," Rumsfeld said. "It is a matter of attitude, of the vision that countries bring to the trans-Atlantic relationship.

"It is no surprise that many of the nations with fresh memories of tyranny and occupation have been among those most willing to face the new threats, and contribute to dealing with them," he said. "This attitude is why, a decade after the Cold War ended, NATO has now invited 10 new allies to join the Atlantic alliance. They are bringing new vision and new vitality to our old alliance.

"Let me be clear: Those countries have not been invited as junior partners, allowed to join the grown-ups' table so long as they sit quietly," Rumsfeld continued. "No, they have been invited to lead."

Rumsfeld is on a four-stop tour that began in Portugal and is due to end at a NATO meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on Thursday. It will be the first since the end of the Iraq war. He stopped for a few hours in Germany to attend the 10th anniversary celebrations of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, a joint institution of the German and American military establishments, which holds seminars and classes for government officials from former communist countries in Europe and Asia.

The site, now a complex of stately cream-colored stucco buildings, was first used by the US in 1945 as a prisoner-of-war camp for officers. Later, it was used to train American officers in Russian and Soviet studies, while a part of it was the headquarters for a mountain division of the German army.

The meeting here, attended by ministers of defense from several former communist countries, including Albania, Azerbaijan, Slovenia and Ukraine, was not the occasion for a major policy address by Rumsfeld. Still, the presence of so many senior officials from the former Soviet bloc seemed to underscore the American enthusiasm for countries like Poland and Romania, as opposed to Germany and France, which opposed the American-led war in Iraq.

The text of Rumsfeld's speech, given to reporters only minutes before the ceremonies began, made reference to countries that want to "define themselves by their opposition to the United States" -- an unmistakable reference to France -- but Rumsfeld omitted the reference in his actual remarks.
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