L to R: Kazakh President Nursultan Nasarbaev, U.S. president George Bush with wife Laura, French president Jacques Chirac and wife of Czech President, Mrs. Dagmar Havlová prior to a festive dinner for the participants of the NATO summit hosted by Czech President Václav Havel. PHOTO - ČTK
PRAGUE - NATO leaders threw opened the doors of the U.S.-led alliance to seven former ex-communist east European countries on Thursday, taking the defence pact born in the Cold War deep into the former Soviet sphere. Secretary-General George Robertson announced at the start of a two-day Prague summit that Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were invited to join the 19-nation alliance in its biggest enlargement, spreading NATO‘s security guarantee from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
„By welcoming seven members, we will not only add to our military capabilities, we will refresh the spirit of this great democratic alliance, „ U.S. President George W. Bush told fellow leaders, calling NATO „our nation‘s most important alliance“. Czech President Vaclav Havel, the summit host, declared: „The era when countries were divided by force into spheres of influence, or when the stronger used to subjugate the weaker, has come to an end.“
The newcomers, who had to reform and modernise their armed forces to qualify, will take their seats in 2004 alongside Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, which became the first three former Warsaw Pact states to join in 1999. Robertson insisted NATO‘s expansion to 26 members was not aimed against Russia, and the alliance remained willing to take in more aspirants from the Balkan region when they were ready. NATO expansion is running in parallel with the eastward enlargement of the European Union, due to climax in Copenhagen next month, erasing political and economic dividing lines that scarred Europe for half a century.
The leaders were set to approve a strike force to combat new threats, and pledge to modernise their armed forces in a drive to make the Atlantic Alliance, marginalised in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, relevant to the post-September 11 world. But Bush‘s quest for allied backing for the threat of war against Iraq if it does not rid itself of its alleged weapons of mass destruction seemed bound to dominate what NATO has proclaimed as a „transformation summit“. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said after a pre-summit meeting with Bush that NATO was united on the need for Saddam to disarm „and how that happens is a choice for him“. Bush used the NATO meeting to seek recruits for a U.S.-led „coalition of the willing“ to force Iraq to disarm if U.N. weapons inspections were unable to do the job.
The allies also approved a U.S. proposal for a 20,000-strong NATO Response Force combining existing high-intensity warfare units to meet threats outside the Euro-Atlantic area. But defence analysts question whether many European nations will make good on the pledges.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has softened his country‘s opposition to NATO enlargement as part of a broad pro-Western policy. But many in Moscow still have misgivings, particularly about the alliance‘s expansion onto former Soviet soil in the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Reuters
