Joint press conference

First of all let me thank Minister Jose Pedro Aguiar Branco for hosting this exercise and for hosting me and my delegation here at this ship. And it’s great to see you again. I visited Portugal and Lisbon not so many weeks ago and then, I remember, we discussed maritime strategy, the importance of increased naval presence and the great contributions of Portugal to NATO’s capacity and capabilities. And it’s great to be back so soon after and to visit this exercise.

And it’s also great to be on board of the Vasco da Gama and to meet with her crew.

Portugal is really doing a great job in co-hosting the Trident Juncture exercise, together with Italy and with Spain.

This is as you know NATO’s largest exercise for over a decade.

And Portugal is making a substantial contribution to the exercise with troops, with fighter jets, and ships to train together with other Allies and partner nations.

This shows Portugal’s strong commitment to keep NATO strong.

Around thirty six thousand troops from more than thirty nations are taking part in the Trident Juncture exercise. 

This morning we saw an impressive display of naval and special forces from different Allied nations training together.

Yesterday in Spain we saw an equally impressive training session of land and air forces. And this afternoon I’m looking forward to meeting with our men and women in uniform training at sea.

From all I have seen and heard, it is clear that Trident Juncture is a great success. Over the past weeks our Allied troops have been tested. At land, at sea and in the air. Allied forces have improved their readiness, their skills and their ability to work together in crisis situations.

And Allied forces are also training with many partners from around the world to improve the way we work together.

NATO is adapting to a new reality. Allies like Portugal, Italy and Spain are on the frontline of the challenges we face to our south.

Trident Juncture demonstrates NATO’s ability to adapt to these and all the other challenges we face. It demonstrates that we can deploy high readiness forces from across the Alliance in a matter of days. And it demonstrates that our deterrence is significant and it is real.

NATO will ensure the safety of all its Allies against any threat. From any direction. That is NATO’s job and we will continue to do just that.

Thank you.

JOSE PEDRO AGUIAR BRANCO (Portuguese Defence Minister):  Thank you Mr. Secretary General for all kinds of words and welcome to Portugal, it’s always a pleasure to be with you in the NATO meetings and in this special exercise it is very important for NATO to show the world that we are a strong alliance and to be ready to respond to all threats. Thank you. Welcome to Portugal. And if you don’t mind I will speak now in Portuguese.

[Speaking Portuguese with Translator]. Thank you very much Secretary General. At the time in which it is ever more visible that there are security challenges before us, especially in the periphery of the Euro Atlantic area, this high visibility exercise, Trident Juncture, demonstrates that NATO is a political and military alliance that is strong, that is ready and capable of dealing with any type of threat whether these be conventional or nonconventional in nature. This means that the alliance is ready and committed to defending our freedom, our shared values respecting individual freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The exercise taking place in Portugal, Spain and Italy involves more than 30,000 personnel from more than 30 partner nations and allied nations. Trident Juncture aims to improve our operational capacity and capability through training and planning, through carrying out of missions and decision making at a military level in a conflict scenario. It also represents the culmination of our training, assessment and certification of VGTF, the new Rapid Response Force and the NRS the NATO Response Forces 2016. It is also important to point out that the exercises help us increase our interoperability levels with partner nations. Portugal, a founding member of NATO, will continue to be proactive in the alliance and will continue to contribute actively to the security and stability of our world. That is how collective security works, this is a matter for the state, one of the pillars of our democracy. By welcoming this exercise in Portugal, also in Italy and Spain, we show our dedication to this. I would also like to say one final word of thank you to the men and women of the forces of the allied and partner nations that took part in the exercise and in particular the Portuguese Armed Forces that demonstrated once again that they are able to carry out exercises of this nature in Portugal. They’re all being tested and I think they all passed with flying colours once again. Thank you.

MODERATOR:  TV, at the back please.

Q:  [Speaking with Translator]. I’m Sonny Materios (sp?) RTP. Minister, throughout the exercise it was evident and those involved showed us that the challenges of the new technologies are a priority for the Portuguese Government, the use of drones, more advanced ships, and these also used in humanitarian missions, is that a considerable level of technology?

JOSE PEDRO AGUIAR BRANCO:  [Speaking with Translator]. Well as you know in the 2020 reform undertaken in this government in the military programming law we undertook to re-equip and modernize our capacities. Rebalancing our public accounts made it possible, we hope we’ll continue to do so in the future to acquire more capabilities and capacity to meet these challenges. And under this military programming law we will be ensuring that there will be more equipment over the next 12 years, more equipment for our armed forces, specifically the navy.

Q: Good afternoon. Baltic News Service, Lithuania. Secretary General a question for you if you don’t mind. Nine Eastern European member states yesterday made a statement urging NATO to increase its presence in the eastern flank of the alliance. How can you respond on that? Can Eastern European countries hope for that, bigger NATO presence and when these decisions can be made? Thank you.

JENS STOLTENBERG (NATO Secretary General):  We have already increased our military presence in the eastern part of the alliance with more planes in the air, with more boots, troops on the ground and also with more ships at sea. And in addition to the increased military presence in the eastern part of the alliance we have also increased our ability to reinforce if needed with the Enhanced NATO Response Force which is more than twice as big as the previous force and also with the establishment of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force or the Spearhead Force which has increased our ability to deploy forces on short notice if needed. So we have already increased presence and increased our ability to reinforce but in addition to that we are also considering what more we can do and this will be one of the main issues, one of the main topics we will discuss and we will address towards our summit in Warsaw next July. NATO has to be able to defend any ally against any threat. We are able to do that today but we have to also recognize that the world is changing and therefore NATO has to adapt and now we are addressing the challenge of what we call long term adaptation. I would also like to say that we have also increased our presence in the eastern part of the alliance with more pre-positioning and also with the establishment of the small headquarters, the NATO Force Integration Unit, and they are key because they are the link between national forces and NATO forces. So this is high on our agenda, we have done a lot, and we are looking into what more we should do.

MODERATOR:  Next person, do you have the microphone?

Q:  [Inaudible], Portuguese Newspaper Expresso. Mr. Minister can you tell us what the participation of Portugal will be in the 2016 NRF?

JOSE PEDRO AGUIAR BRANCO:  [Speaking with Translator].  Well our participation in the NRF for 2016 will include a battalion, a frigate and six F-16s. We weren’t able to use in this exercise. The possibility of being present in this type of force is possible thanks to the reforms undertaken by Portugal so that we can be in line with the conclusions that came out of the Wales Summit. As you know in the Wales Summit and the conclusions thereof that are important for the additional response capability of NATO has to do with an increase in defence budgets, it also has to do with greater investment so that we are able to respond more readily to the threats we face internationally today. And Portugal as an active and very responsible member, responsible for international security, member of NATO and of course this is one of our priorities in our defence policy is going to be participating in this way in 2016 and so this is how we’ll be living up to our responsibilities with a view to dealing with the challenges NATO has ahead. Thinking about the Wales Summit and thinking about being in line with NATO so that we can find responses to the challenges ahead.

Q:  Deborah Haynes, The Times Newspaper:  Secretary General, what comment do you have to these developments about the Russian air crash, that it could have been brought down by some sort of an explosive device on board? And also can you just flesh out what plans NATO has to help boost or defend Turkish air space, like are there going to be more NATO planes flying out of Incirlik along with the patriot missile defence systems? Thank you.

JENS STOLTENBERG:  The plane crash was a profound human tragedy and I have already expressed my heartfelt condolences to the families and to the Russian people. There is an investigation going on and it will look into all possible causes of this tragedy and I think it’s extremely important that we get all the facts on the table because this is a very serious accident taking the lives of many people and therefore we need to understand how it could have happened and what caused the crash of the plane. NATO is not directly involved or not involved in this investigation so I will refrain from commenting on the ongoing investigation but I think it’s extremely important that we get all the facts and that we are then able to draw conclusions about what happened. When it comes to Turkey, Turkey is a NATO ally, Turkey is the NATO ally most affected by the turmoil, the violence in Turkey, in Syria and, excuse me in Syria and Iraq and, and NATO stands in solidarity with Turkey. Yesterday I visited Spain, Spain as part of a NATO operation or mission in Turkey deployed patriot batteries to augment the air defences of Turkey. Turkey is a strong ally itself with a strong army, strong air defences but NATO is there augmenting their air defences. We are also looking into what more we can do and I know that the both our NATO military authorities are now looking into whether we should do more and what more NATO can do but let me also underline that NATO allies have increased their presence in Turkey, not least for instance United States. As part of the coalition fighting ISIL they have increased their presence for instance at the Incirlik Air Base and thereby also of course increased US presence in Turkey. So we are constantly assessing, we are working with both our military authorities, with Turkey and with NATO allies to see what more we can do to continue to support Turkey in a difficult situation.

MODERATOR:  Last question to AFP.

Q:  Secretary General, Bryan McManus, can I take you back to the comments of my Lithuanian…

JENS STOLTENBERG:  Could you speak directly into the microphone, it helps.

Q:  Okay I’ll start again. I would like you to clarify the remarks you made in response to the question from my Lithuanian colleague about what more could be done to reassure the eastern allies because they want, or they have raised the possibility of a permanent basing of forces and up to now NATO has stressed that this is rotational, it’s not permanent, because we all know the importance of that. You said you are considering what more can we do, in this context can you clarify if that includes the issue of permanent bases? Thank you.

JENS STOLTENBERG:  It includes the issue of presence and there are different kinds of presence and I think the important thing is that we have military presence. And I think that the, to some extent it’s also some kind of artificial to distinguish between rotational presence and other kinds of presence in the way that as long as there are, that we have forces there, troops there, planes there, ships there, it reinforces our ability to defend and protect all the allies in the eastern part of the alliance. And we have already increased our presence and we are looking into the question of whether we should increase it even more. But I would also like to stress that the whole idea, which, the decisions we made in Wales are based on is that it is a combination of increased presence with increased ability to reinforce if needed. And that’s exactly what, for instance, the Trident Juncture exercise is about. It’s our ability to deploy forces on early warning, on indications to avoid situation to escalate and to become a real, a crisis. So we need both and we are, and we are doing both and we will then towards our Wales … our next summit in Warsaw, look into what more we can do. Let me add one more thing and that is about the Russian military build-up in various regions like for instance Kaliningrad, the Black Sea and now in the eastern part of the Mediterranean with the increased presence in Syria and with naval forces in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. This is a military build-up which provides the Russians with what many experts call anti-access area denial capabilities. And we have to be sure that we are able to overcome these capabilities so we can reinforce, so we can move and we can deploy forces if needed. And therefore the question on our agenda now is how to overcome, how to deal with the increased anti-access area denial capabilities of Russia both in the Baltic Sea, in the Black Sea and now also in the Mediterranean. And actually I was told this morning that, that also this Trident Juncture exercise, we addressed these issues and we looked into how NATO can overcome, penetrate the anti-access area denial capabilities of Russia. We are able to do so but again we have to develop, we have to enhance, reinforce our forces all the time to make sure that we are also able to do that in the future and also in a challenging security environment. That’s also part of the answer to the Eastern European allies, that we are dealing with the anti-access area denial capabilities of Russia.

MODERATOR:  This press conference comes to an end but please don’t leave us because now we have our four military commanders coming on stage and they will brief you about the military details of this exercise. Thank you very much.