NATO's “pseudo-mission” against pirates

(B2) The mission was announced loudly during the informal meeting of NATO Defense Ministers in Krakow. “NATO is studying the dispatch of six warships off the Somali coast in the spring to participate in the fight against piracy”, trumpeted Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the secretary general of the Euro-Atlantic organization. However, he refrained from specifying the details of this shipment. Because in terms of mission, according to diplomats, there is none as such.

Simply, one of NATO's two permanent naval groups (SNMG) must soon carry out a “cruise to Singapore and Australia” (as my colleague from AFP explains). And he would benefit from it “on the way out or back to carry out a deterrence mission”, thus providing occasional reinforcement to the ships already present in the European Union zone (EUNAVFOR), anti-terrorist and anti-piracy coalitions (CTF-150 and CTF-151, led by the Americans and including Danes, Pakistanis …), and other countries (Russia, China and other countries).

A German official even spilled the beans. A little exasperated, it seems, to see his hand forced in this way. Three German ships (including a replenishment tanker) should come and relieve their EUNAVFOR colleagues. One of them will come from NATO's SNMG and could thus carry the NATO flag during the journey, before taking that of the European Union. As German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung confirmed: “ We do not have a mandate from the Bundestag to carry out a mission under NATO but only under the European Union ».