NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with EU foreign chief Catherine Ashton Tuesday in Brussels, vowing further cooperation between the two organizations to tackle common issues, Xinhua reported.
Fogh Rasmussen and Ashton met at NATO headquarters Tuesday morning in Brussels. The NATO chief told a news conference that Ashton and he shared the view that the two organizations "need to talk more together, and do more together, from planning to procurement to operations."
Though "political complications won't be cleared up overnight," the two can step up cooperation such as in Afghanistan, in Kosovo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina and off the coast of Somalia, he said.
"Speaking frankly, maybe a bit bluntly, the EU must move to accommodate some concerns raised by NATO allies that are not EU members. The EU should include non-EU contributors to the military decision-making process, it should conclude a security agreement with Turkey and an arrangement between Turkey and the European Defense Agency," Fogh Rasmussen said.
Ashton told reporters that strengthening EU-NATO cooperation was "extremely important", and there was "great strength and willingness across both organizations to try and find pragmatic ways of dealing with these issues."
Fogh Rasmussen also said that the main topic of Tuesday's meeting was Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the EU leads Operation Althea supported by NATO assets and capabilities.
"All the countries around the table today shared the view that Bosnia and Herzegovina's future lies in Euro-Atlantic structures. But I must also say that there was real concern today about the level of ethnic tension and rhetoric in Bosnia and Herzegovina," he said.
The alliance conditionally extended the Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Bosnia and Herzegovina at its Foreign Ministers meeting in Tallinn in April
