National Defence committee  Transparency, yes. Actually, that's exactly where we find that NATO is. In fact, whenever we ask for something and say that it's for transparency's sake, they fall all over themselves to be helpful. They recognize the value of the parliamentary organization providing transparency

National Defence committee  We do everything we can in that regard. We have several meetings per year where we specifically engage partners from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf. This year alone we've got three visits to the Gulf. We've done Abu Dhabi, we're doing Qatar, and we hope to do Saudi A

National Defence committee  Thank you for that. First of all, on the Arctic, by the way, the members of the assembly who are Arctic powers, if you like, have ensured that it features regularly on the assembly's agenda. For example, this year one of our committees is going to be specifically looking at sear

National Defence committee  Cyber will be one of the subjects of one of our reports this year. Absolutely, cyber isn't a pending threat. In terms of cyber, even in my organization we have to deal—I won't say daily, but a lot—with people trying to break in and hack. NATO is extremely active and, by the way,

National Defence committee  I don't think the alliance works with sticks as well as it does with carrots, and I don't think anyone would go as far as talking about expulsion or anything like that. In fact, the Wales commitment was made by all the alliance nations. It's not been imposed by anybody. They al

National Defence committee  Thank you very much. We do co-operate as much as we possibly can with other inter-parliamentary organizations. We find that, simply because our agenda is so heavy, more of them come to us than we can possibly go to. We have regular participation from the Parliamentary Assembly o

National Defence committee  Actually, one of our committees, the economic and security committee, is going to be looking at that this year. One of its focuses is the future of the space industry. I used to be the director of the Assembly science and technology committee, and it's an issue that keeps comi

National Defence committee  We actually have—

National Defence committee  The issue of burden-sharing is as old as the alliance itself, and it's been raised repeatedly, obviously by American administrations. There was a particular speech by Secretary Gates, in Brussels, just before he left, under the Obama administration. It's one of those situations

National Defence committee  Yes, very much so. We had three bilateral groups, if you like: one with Russia, one with Ukraine—which was founded at the same time—and one with Georgia, which was founded, of course, after Russia occupied Abkhazia and South Ossetia. We also have a group that is multilateral, whi

National Defence committee  Are we on the record?

National Defence committee  If we went out for a beer....

National Defence committee  Gabor Iklódy was excellent. He's now with the EU, incidentally. I think he voiced a sense of it, something that is still voiced frequently. Discussions within NATO itself do tend to be focused, for all sorts of reasons, on the very specific security agenda. It's getting much bett

National Defence committee  I think there was big concern about NATO enlargement. It was, of course, how much more difficult it would be to achieve consensus. Simply, the more people you add, the more difficult consensus is to achieve. People on the inside tell me that has not been the case. They still fin

National Defence committee  Historically, we have followed disarmament negotiations very closely. That includes everything from agreements to ban land mines to regulation of certain non-lethal weapons, for example, blinding weapons. We have also looked at conventional forces limitations, and we followed all