An alliance getting tighter: NATO running out of cash (News Feature)

Brussels - NATO is running out of money. Slowly, but surely, the 28-member defence alliance is spending more money than it has, driving it into a financial bind unseen its 60-year history. Now defence ministers of the member states are discussing what to do about it. On Thursday and Friday, NATO will hold a ministerial- level meeting in the Slovakian capital Bratislava. 'Nations have decided to do things we can't fully pay for, and this can't continue,' said NATO's Secretary General, former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. But savings will be hard to come by, as the alliance expands its operations in Afghanistan, not to mention commitments off the coast of Somalia and in the Balkans. The political bargaining will be even tougher. NATO's spokesman, James Appathurai, would not put precise numbers on the alliance's shortfall, but said that 'the operational requirements which draw on the budget exceed what we have. Not dramatically, but significantly enough that it cannot be ignored.' In fact NATO is missing from its military budget per year a solid 'double-digit figure in the millions,' diplomats say, perhaps more than 50 million euros (75 million dollars), according to some sources. The alliance's investment portfolio is also believed to have lost some 8 to 10 million euros over the past several years. In comparison, however, with what the member states pay for their own military budgets, contributions to the NATO coffers are negligible. Germany's input, for example, which makes up some 15 per cent of NATO's funding, amounts to less than 0.5 per cent of what Berlin spends on its own defence budget. National members contributions to NATO coffers have hardly changed, even as the responsibilities of the alliance have grown. While NATO's budget used to be just for the administration of the alliance itself, by now it also ends up paying items like AWACS surveillance flights and army hospitals in the Hindu Kush. 'This gap must be filled as soon as possible, and I will want to see with ministers how we can address this, either by making savings or by taking a hard look at what we consider priorities,' Rasmussen said. 'Cuts, delays, postponements': One diplomat says these are the leading topics at the upcoming Bratislava meeting. But these things are exactly NATO's diplomatic sticking points. Within the past year, NATO has introduced a new command structure, which was supposed to share jobs and influence more evenly. So while a slimmed-down NATO executive may be a good idea, diplomats say, politically it is scarcely possible. NATO's 'southern' members - from Turkey and Greece to Italy and Spain - are thought to be particularly against any slimming measures. The most easterly NATO states, some of which are not long out of the shadow of the Soviet Union, are also nervous that budget cuts could endanger Article 5 of the NATO Charter - the collective assistance article, which was first used after the September 11 attacks in the US. Before NATO can begin to make savings, it must agree on what its future ambitions are, say diplomats, for example whether it will be necessary in future to be able to maintain two major and six minor deployments at once, as is currently the case. Such issues could only be decided with the new NATO Strategic Concept, a drawn-out deliberation currently underway within the alliance. The issue of the budget gap, therefore, is likely to be put on the back burner.