20 October 1997
(Rep. Solomon: Enlarging NATO best guarantor of peace) (560) By Rick Marshall USIA Staff Writer Alpbach, Austria -- Adding new members from Central and Eastern Europe to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is "the most important issue facing the United States and Europe," Congressman Gerald Solomon told a special conference on NATO enlargement here October 18. The New York Republican, who was just recently named chairman of the House NATO Observer Group by Speaker Newt Gingrich, sees NATO's decision to admit new members from Central and Eastern Europe as the best chance to avoid the experiences of the past century, when U.S. forces were compelled to intervene in Europe in two world wars and spend huge sums to prevail during more than four decades of Cold War. "NATO and NATO's enlargement is the absolute key to ensuring that it will not happen again," Solomon told the conference hosted by the New Atlantic Initiative in association with European Forum Alpbach. "We have before us a historic opportunity of epic proportions," he stated. "An expanded NATO is our best guarantor of peace." Solomon stressed that the doors to NATO membership should remain open to other countries in addition to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, who were invited to begin accession talks at the NATO summit in Madrid this July. After all they have gone through, should we turn our backs on the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, he asked? "The answer is no, no, no." Indeed, Solomon suggested that Russia, too, should not be excluded from eventual NATO membership, provided it could meet NATO criteria and wanted to join. Solomon also predicted that the U.S. Senate would ratify the changes to the Washington Treaty needed to admit the three new members. "I am very confident we will prevail," he said. "We will have the votes necessary." At the same time, he warned his audience, which included many European scholars and journalists, of the danger in turning the Alliance away from its primary task of collective defense. "If this tide is not stemmed," he observed, "Congress will grow very skeptical." Many of these same sentiments were noted by a panel of congressional sources from both parties who spoke at the conference on condition that they not be named. "There really isn't any opposition" to the new members one said. On the other hand, "there are skeptics," he noted. Support for enlarging the Alliance is "wide, but vulnerable." This means that issues such as burden-sharing must be handled with care, the panelists all agreed. In late November a NATO study on the costs of adding the three new members is expected. It would be very helpful to the Senate if the Europeans made clear their intention to fund their fair share of the costs of enlargement at that time, the sources said. The Bosnian crisis could also affect Senate ratification of NATO enlargement, the sources all agreed, as the full Senate is scheduled to vote on the matter this spring, only weeks prior to the possible withdrawal of U.S. forces from Bosnia. One of the congressional sources, close to the Republican side of the aisle, repeated Solomon's warning to keep NATO closely focused on collective defense and not to burden the Alliance with secondary issues.