NATO, once an alliance aimed at stopping Soviet tanks at the height of the Cold War, is facing an epochal change, its Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Monday in Berlin.

"We are no longer facing a classic military threat," he said at a meeting of German armed forces commanders near Germany's Defense Ministry. "The terrorism of the 21st century has no army and no concentration area."

De Hoop Scheffer added that a black market of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons had become a "grim reality," another threat linked to the changing world in times of globalization.

"We need armed forces that far from home are able to handle the entire military portfolio -- from peacekeeping to combat missions," he said, stressing that he is opposing the idea of individual countries helping the alliance with individual services. "Everyone must be able to do everything," he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had spoken shortly before the secretary-general, had listed three more scenarios she believes are threatening global security: regional conflicts and failed states, the violation of human rights (noting the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region) and the potentially catastrophic effects of water shortage, which may lead to severe social unrest in Africa and Asia.

To stem that danger, Merkel called for greater international security cooperation, calling on NATO and the European Union to more closely link up on future military steps.

"It has become clear that no one can solve the problems in the world alone -- not even a world power like the United States. Everyone needs partners," she said.

De Hoop Scheffer agreed, noting that non-NATO countries from all over the world, such as Australia, Japan and Singapore, have in the past participated in NATO missions.

The future roles of NATO, he added, could lie with future threat scenarios: De Hoop Scheffer indicated that NATO may be able to protect the "security of our energy infrastructure" (a statement that may sound offensive to Russian President Vladimir Putin) and provide help in cases of cyberattacks like the one that hit Estonia in 2007. Last but not least, NATO could play a leading role in the case of missile defense, he said.

That issue, and the ongoing transformation of the alliance, will be key issues at a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, next month, where NATO "will still have to come up with answers for many open questions," Merkel warned.

Germany itself has over the past years tried to answer security questions, especially regarding its own armed forces, the Bundeswehr, which has been an example of an army in transformation.

In the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bundeswehr integrated roughly 20,000 soldiers of former communist East Germany, downsized the troop strength and included more special, rapid-reaction equipment.

While the U.S. and British military budgets still dwarf Germany's, Berlin's military spending in 2008 will grow by $1.5 billion compared with the year before, Merkel said.

That additional money, however, is desperately needed, as Germany has been taking part in an increasing number of international peacekeeping and security missions all over the globe.

German soldiers are stationed in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, off the coast of Lebanon and in Africa. Germany played a leading role in the EU mission aimed at securing the first democratic elections in three decades in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a mission that was "highly successful" also because German troops extensively took into account the local culture, an asset that often sets them apart from other countries' soldiers, Merkel said.

Yet the German chancellor and the NATO secretary-general disagreed over Afghanistan, where Germany is under pressure to move its troops into the volatile southern provinces.

Merkel on Monday denied those calls, arguing that the roughly 3,500 German troops stationed in the relatively peaceful northern provinces to do reconstruction work were utterly needed there.

"Our approach remains: No reconstruction without security, no security without reconstruction," she said, adding that Germany had already sent Tornado reconnaissance planes to fly missions all over the country and that the Bundeswehr would of course aid forces in the southern provinces in case of an emergency.

De Hoop Scheffer, however, made it clear that this was not enough, arguing that Afghanistan should not be divided into areas of responsibility for reconstruction, peacekeeping and combat missions.

"Whoever builds school in the North becomes a target for the Taliban, just as those fighting them directly in the South," he said. "This country will be won in its entirety or lost in its entirety."

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