Nato’s new secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, focuses on achieving democracy in Afghanistan

The full participation and cooperation of all Nato members is the key to achieving the organisation’s overriding concern, democracy in Afghanistan, the country’s former prime minister says.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen today took over as head of Nato’s US-European military alliance from outgoing leader Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Rasmussen officially took over as Nato secretary general on Saturday but only took military command today.

The former Danish prime minister made it clear that his most important task as Nato boss would be securing peace and democracy in Afghanistan – a goal that would likely require some degree of compromise with the Taliban.

‘There’s definitely a hardcore section of the Taliban with whom it’s impossible to reach any kind of agreement,’ Rasmussen told Politiken newspaper. ‘But there are some groups you can at least talk to in an effort to achieve some sort of rapprochement within the Afghan community.’

He added, however, that any type of written agreement with the Taliban was unlikely.

When he was selected for the Nato job, Rasmussen promised to strive to create better relations between the West and the Muslim world. His candidacy for the post was nearly derailed by Turkey, which disapproved of his handling of the Mohammed cartoon affair and his allowing Kurdish television station Roj to air in Denmark.

But despite his willingness to negotiate with the Taliban, Rasmussen stressed he would not bend on the military campaign’s principles in establishing democracy in Afghanistan. He added that it was of utmost importance that the burden of the Afghan mission does not rest solely upon the US, urging Nato members to participate in creating a true alliance.

Rasmussen also said he would work to secure that a formal agreement was signed between Nato’s 64,000-troop International Security Assistance Force and the European Union in order to have a mandatory protection policy in place for EU police forces working with the Afghan police.

‘It’s ridiculous that there isn’t already such an agreement in place,’ he said. ‘When we’ve got soldiers down there then they naturally also ought to protect the police as well.’

According to experts, other key challenges for Rasmussen in his new post will be smoothing out relations with Russia and expanding Nato to include Australia, New Zealand and possibly Japan.