Sunday February 3, 3:17 AM

Anti-terror fight may mean shifting alliances: US official



US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz warned European allies that his country was ready to act outside traditional alliances in its fight against terror -- and hinted that it would take a dim view of anyone who tried to sit on the fence.

He also said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needed "a military transformation agenda" in order to "to develop (its) capacities in counter-terrorism."

"Nations cannot afford to act like those neutral nations 60 years ago, of whom Winston Churchill so acidly observed, 'Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last,'" Wolfowitz told a 43-nation security conference in Munich.

"Our approach has to aim at prevention and not merely punishment," he said.

Karl Lamers, a German conservative opposition official, summed up European concern when he said: "It cannot be that you decide and we follow."

But Wolfowitz, who is considered a hardliner, said that on the military front US tactics were to use "not a single coalition but rather different coalitions for different missions."

"The mission must determine the coalition, the coalition must not determine the mission," he said.

Giving an example, he said: "At the end of the day, we don't need NATO in the Philippines," a reference to current US military actions in that country.

Wolfowitz said that NATO must learn a lesson from the current crisis and adapt itself to fight terrorism.

US Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, told the Munich conference: "Americans believe we have a mandate to defeat and dismantle the global terrorist network."

European and Asian ministers spoke about their roles in alliances in which the United States is acting in an increasingly unilateral and aggressive fashion, most recently with US President George W. Bush's calling Iran, Iraq and North Korea an "axis of evil."

McCain said: "Dictators that harbor terrorists and build these weapons are now on notice that such behavior is itself, a casus belli.

"Nowhere is such an ultimatum more applicable than in Saddam Hussein's Iraq," McCain, a former US presidential hopeful, said.

But Wolfowitz told reporters that it was a "long way from what the president said to concluding any course of action."

He said Bush had "identified the problem" but had "made no decision."

"It is a long way from a decision about what to do, but not a long way from seeing we have a very serious problem," Wolfowitz said.

Chinese and Indian speakers warned against the United States going it alone.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the US-led anti-terrorist fight should not be "arbitrarily" widened, in an apparent response to Bush's comments.

Indian national security advisor Brajesh Mishra said terrorism could only be "tackled effectively with a global and comprehensive approach."

"Compartmentalized national approaches cannot advance our collective purpose of crushing (terrorism), since terrorism has developed a seamless web of international linkages," Mishra said.

Many European leaders agreed with Edmund Stoiber, a conservative candidate for the chancellor's post in host-nation Germany, who said that EU states must answer the US call for them to spend more on defense.

"We Europeans must not only rely on Americans. We must do more for our own security. It is a truly European task," Stoiber said.

Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino said: "Once again, we are confronted by the problem of how to reduce the imbalance between the United States military capabilities and those of Europe, because the new global defense and security tasks are on such a scale that they cannot be managed by the United States alone and require that Europe make a greater contribution."

Wolfowitz said NATO had provided valuable logistics support in the current crisis but that the time has come "to launch a reform of the Alliance command structure to make it leaner, more streamlined, more cost efficient and, above all, more flexible."

German police on Saturday were out in force and detained the leader of a coalition organizing an anti-capitalistic, anti-war protest in central Munich against the security conference.

Police kept some 2,000 demonstrators in check. They detained almost 500 people and formally arrested 42 for allegedly committing violent assault and resisting arrest.