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PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, let me just say how much I appreciate the opportunity once again to meet with Secretary lk General lk Rasmussen.  I have to say that in the entire time that he has served in this position he has done an outstanding job.  His leadership, his vision, his clarity, and his political skills -- because there are a lot of NATO members -- have all been on display, and as a consequence, the Transatlantic Alliance is stronger, more robust than it was without him.  And so we’re very grateful for his extraordinary lk work. 
At a time when the situation in Ukraine I think has focused everyone’s attention on the importance of the transatlantic relationships, we spent most of our discussion reaffirming the importance of NATO, that it is the bedrock of America’s security as well as European security.  We share the view that Russia’s illegal lk incursion into Ukraine and the violations of territorial lk integrity and sovereignty have to be condemned, but it also reminds us that the NATO commitments that we’ve made under Article 5 are something that are not just items on a piece of paper, but are critically important to all NATO members.  And we have to have the resources and preparation to make sure that every member of NATO feels confident in Article 5’s effect.
We’ve already made a series of decisions to help underscore the importance of NATO and collective defense in the wake of what has happened in Ukraine.  There will be a ministerial summit coming up at which I have asked the United States delegation to work cooperatively with the Secretary General’s office and evaluate lk all the additional steps that we might take in order to bolster that confidence among all NATO members.
And we also talked about a project that the Secretary General has been working on for quite some time to continue to develop the joint capabilities of NATO.  And I think that at this moment, as I said at the press conference earlier today, lk both the United States and Europe are going to have to make sure that we are stepping up our game and making the contributions that are required in order for us to give full effect to our NATO obligations.
One of the things lk that I’ve been very proud of in working with Secretary Rasmussen is the degree of unanimity that he has been able to forge on a whole range of issues.  One of his biggest jobs has been dealing with the situation in Afghanistan as we end our combat mission in Afghanistan and we transition to a train-and-advise situation.  He has helped to oversee that process.  We do not yet have a Bilateral Security Agreement that fully clarifies what the nature of our mission will be post-2014, but working together, we’re confident that we can prepare for any eventuality and that we can continue to maintain both the counterterrorism commitments as well as the commitments to help develop an Afghan security force that can ensure that Afghanistan does not end up being, once again, a safe haven for terrorism and that it can be a stable a