Operations in Afghanistan, and relations with Russia and the countries bordering the Mediterranean, will be NATO's top priorities over the next four years, the alliance's new secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said on Monday.

"I want to see NATO reach its full potential as a pillar of global security," Rasmussen told journalists at his first press conference in his new role.

His task over the next four years will be to chair NATO meetings and summits, as well as to coordinate debates and decisions among member states. NATO's efforts to stabilize Afghanistan by training the country's security forces to defeat extremists is at the top of the priority list.

"Success would be to transfer the responsibility for security to the Afghans themselves. This is the ultimate goal," Rasmussen said.

That will only be achieved if NATO stays in the country for the long term, he added. Public support for the Afghan mission has fallen sharply in some alliance nations following a surge in casualties over recent months.

"We will support the Afghan people for as long as it takes. Let me repeat that, for as long as it takes," he said.

Relations with Russia

The second priority will be to improve cooperation on security issues with Moscow, one year after Russian troops marched into Georgia, a country with NATO aspirations.

Rasmussen admitted that there will be areas of fundamental disagreement, but insisted that these must not be allowed to poison the entire relationship.

"I consider it a very important challenge to convince the Russian people and leadership that NATO is really not an enemy," he said.

NATO froze ties with Russia after the war, but re-started formal cooperation in the spring. Both sides remain at odds over issues such as NATO enlargement and missile defense.

Rasmussen is also hoping to improve relations with the countries around the Mediterranean and in the Middle East, and has already invited the ambassadors of Mediterranean states including Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia to hold one-on-one talks.

Rasmussen was Denmark's prime minister in 2005 when a series of cartoons in a Copenhagen newspaper showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad outraged Muslim public opinion.

"Let me assure the governments and people (in NATO partner states along the Mediterranean and in the Middle East) that I am fully committed to building stronger relations with them on the basis of mutual respect, understanding and trust," Rasmussen said on his first day in office.

"I will take concrete steps, starting today, to engage with the countries of the Mediterranean Dialogue ... I will personally engage in dialogue with all of them to hear their views," he said.

NATO founded its Mediterranean Dialogue in 1994 in a bid to build closer ties and improve security cooperation around its southern borders.

Rasmussen stressed that, for him, the cartoons controversy was "an element of the past," and said he was looking forward to working with Muslim leaders in Afghanistan, in particular.

Debating NATO's future strategy

The alliance's new secretary general also announced that Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as US Secretary of State, is to lead a group of 12 experts debating NATO's future strategy.

The last time the North Atlantic Treaty Organization drew up an overall strategy was in 1999, well before events such as the 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the surge in pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden, which NATO is now engaged in fighting.

Albright and her vice-chair, Jeroen van der Veer, former head of Royal Dutch Shell, will therefore lead a discussion on what probable challenges NATO will face over the next decade and how it should respond to them.

Their 10 expert colleagues include Britain's former defense minister Geoff Hoon, Turkey's former ambassador to NATO, Umit Pamir, and the president of the French national library, Bruno Racine, as well as a number of career diplomats.

NATO will also launch an online forum where ordinary citizens can make suggestions, Rasmussen said. The proposals will be passed on to NATO member states, with final approval of the new strategy expected at the alliance's next summit in Lisbon in late 2010.

mrm/Reuters/AP/dpa

Editor: Susan Houlton