Ohioan gets top post on NATO assembly
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Paul Gillmor’s Republican party is on the outs in Washington, but the northwest Ohio lawmaker is moving up on the international scene.
Gillmor became the highest ranking North American in NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly, a group of 248 lawmakers from the 26 countries of the trans-Atlantic alliance. He was elected to a one-year term as the assembly’s North American vice president in a vote last week in Quebec, Canada
The assembly — a body with no power to set policy but that makes recommendations to NATO leaders and member countries — is led by a president, a North American vice president, two European vice presidents and five committee chairmen
“This is a great opportunity to exchange views and get to know the parliamentarians from other countries,” he said. “It helps in foreign relations and helps us understand their point of view.”
Gillmor, who spent the last four years as the chairman of the assembly’s Economic and Security Committee, says he has a strong working relationship with Bert Koenders, the Dutch parliamentarian elected president of the assembly at the same meeting in Canada.
But he and Koenders appear to have at least somewhat different perspectives on NATO’s principal current military action in Afghanistan.
In his acceptance speech last week, Koenders told the assembly that part of the effort in Afghanistan should be to emphasize “respect and adherence to humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions.”
Gillmor believes insurgents captured in Afghanistan are not covered by the Geneva Conventions’ assurance of humane treatment because they are not uniformed members of a national armed forces. Still, Gillmor said he didn’t think the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan would cause conflict in the assembly.
He agrees with Koenders that all NATO member nations need to be fully committed to defeating a resurgent Taliban.
Gillmor is concerned that some NATO member states in Europe do not meet a minimum standard of spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense.
“We do, the Brits do, the French do and a couple other countries, but the fact that they don’t do that means that sometimes when we have these operations, we have to bear a disproportionate part of the burden,” Gillmor said.