A NATO defense ministers' meeting originally scheduled to be held in Naples next week has been cancelled because of last week's terror attacks in the US, NATO officials said Friday.
"The NATO meeting has been cancelled. We still do not know if it will be moved to alliance headquarters in Brussels or if it will take place at another date," an alliance official said.
But Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is in Brussels for an extraordinary EU summit to discuss the aftermath of the attacks, said the NATO meeting would go ahead in Brussels.
"For obvious reasons, NATO has decided to move the meeting that was to be held in Naples to its headquarters in Brussels," Berlusconi was quoted by Italian news agencies as saying in Brussels.
"This is a choice that seems to me to be completely understandable," he said.
The meeting will be held September 26 and 27 as initially planned, Berlusconi added.
The NATO official said: "The cancellation has nothing to do with any terrorist threats against NATO, but the secretary-general [George Robertson] thought it inadvisable in the circumstances to have part of the staff in Brussels and part in Naples for three days."
The talks were scheduled before the devastating terror attacks that hit the eastern United States last week, but they are likely to be dominated by the aftermath, and by an expected US-led operation to hit back at the perpetrators -- BRUSSELS (AFP)
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