15 March 1999

TEXT: SOLANA AT THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS MARCH 15

(Says NATO is "ready to act" on crisis in Kosovo) (2860)

Washington -- NATO Secretary General Javier Solana said NATO is ready
to act if President Milosevic "does not show a more flexible and
constructive attitude to the crisis in Kosovo at the Peace Talks"
which resume in Paris March 15.

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations here, Solana said, "One
lesson that we have learned from Bosnia, and which we are now applying
in Kosovo, is that diplomacy can often only succeed when it is backed
up with the credible threat of military force."

"We are ready to provide a NATO-led international military force to
ensure that an agreement, once reached, is effectively implemented,"
the NATO Secretary General said.

"The European Allies will provide most of the troops," Solana said.
"But U.S. involvement is crucial. It will demonstrate in the most
concrete way the essential transatlantic unity of purpose without
which we simply cannot solve problems like Bosnia and Kosovo."

Solana said that at the NATO Summit to be held here in Washington,
NATO will welcome the three new members, the Czech Republic, Hungary
and Poland. "In bringing these three countries into NATO, we have
demonstrated that NATO is an Alliance bringing security to the whole
of Europe, and that our door is open to all those countries that are
willing and able to shoulder the responsibilities as well as the
benefits of membership."

At the NATO Summit in April, Solana also said, "we will adopt a new,
revised Strategic Concept which will define NATO's future roles and
missions. It will strike a balance between these new missions and
Article 5 commitments to collective defense, which is still the core
of NATO."

"The security partnership between Europe and North America is our best
guarantee that we will emerge successfully from this experience and
able to live our lives in peace and freedom. It is not only the
leaders of Europe and America, but all our publics, who bear a common
responsibility to keep that partnership in NATO strong."

Following is the NATO text:

(begin text)

At the Council on Foreign Relations
Washington, 15 March 1999

"NATO: Ready to Meet the Challenges Ahead"

Speech by Dr. Javier Solana, NATO Secretary General

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am very pleased to be here at the prestigious Council on Foreign
Relations. Over the past 50 years, this Council has been at the
forefront of America's support for NATO and of this nation's continued
engagement in European security.

It is therefore fitting that we are commemorating together the 50th
anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty.

This anniversary takes place in circumstances not even remotely
similar to those of NATO's anxious birth half a century ago. The
Soviet threat has gone. Europe's division is over. Democracy and the
market economy are being embraced across all of Europe. European
Monetary Union has just been achieved. In short, the situation today
is better, and dramatically better, than what the Alliance's founding
fathers could have hoped for.

As a result of these and other reassuring developments over the past
decade, some have inevitably asked whether there is still a need for
NATO. After all, the threats which inspired NATO's creation have
largely disappeared. The risk of large-scale aggression against the
Western democracies is gone.

My answer is, emphatically, yes. First, because NATO's raison d'ˆtre
was never based solely on any single threat. It was based on a
recognition that North America and Europe share common values,
interests and principles - and that they best preserve these by
sticking together, not going it alone. These principles are
well-described in the preamble to the North Atlantic Treaty: to
contribute to peace and security by safeguarding freedom, the rule of
law and our democratic way of life. Such values endure. As does our
duty to defend and uphold them - if we are to keep them.

There is still a need for NATO, secondly, because the members of the
Alliance continue to face serious challenges to their security. The
end of the ideological confrontation in Europe has meant the end of a
direct military threat to Allied territories. But history has not come
to an end. The far-reaching political changes across Central and
Eastern Europe have not, unfortunately, been universally peaceful and
benign. Indeed scenes of cruelty and human suffering which we thought
had disappeared with the forties have made an unwelcome comeback in
the nineties. So the future of Europe cannot be placed on automatic
pilot.

Imagine if NATO had been disbanded in 1991, following the end of the
Cold War, as some had suggested. Imagine confronting the war in
Bosnia, uncertainty and instability in Central and Eastern Europe, the
emergence of Ukraine as an independent country, the difficult road
that democratic Russia is travelling - without NATO. Or constraining
the ethnic violence in Kosovo - without NATO.

Without NATO, there would be no peace in Bosnia today.

Without NATO, there would not have been the incentive for the emergent
democracies of Central and Eastern Europe to reform their armed
forces, bring them under civilian control, and settle border and
minority differences with their neighbours.

Without NATO, we would not have had a means whereby democratic Russia
could re-define its relations with the countries of Central and
Eastern Europe and of the Alliance. We would not have had the
NATO-Russia Founding Act - a key instrument for ensuring that Russia
is anchored firmly in the new Europe and that Russia can play a
constructive role in Europe's security. Nor would we have had Russia
joining the Allies in our first major military operation - the
Implementation Force in Bosnia. In short: if NATO had been disbanded
in 1991, we would have had to re-invent it to deal with the issues I
have mentioned. Instead, our task today is to strengthen the Alliance
and continue adapting it to meet the new challenges ahead.

That is why the leaders of the NATO countries will be meeting in this
city for a NATO Summit in just five weeks' time. At the Summit we will
adopt a new, revised Strategic Concept which will define NATO's future
roles and missions. It will strike a balance between these new
missions and Article 5 commitments to collective defense, which is
still the core of NATO.

Also at our meeting in Washington we will welcome the three new
members of NATO, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.

In bringing these three countries into NATO, we have demonstrated that
NATO is an Alliance bringing security to the whole of Europe, and that
our door is open to all those countries that are willing and able to
shoulder the responsibilities as well as the benefits of membership.
Our ceremony in Brussels tomorrow represents the triumph of justice
over history . It demonstrates that in tomorrow's Europe a country's
geographical location or size will no longer prevent it from enjoying
security, a voice at the table or integration into the Euro-Atlantic
institutions. But this giant step will not be the last. NATO's door
will remain open. At the Washington Summit we will launch a plan
designed to help aspiring members meet NATO standards in a much more
intensive and interactive way.

An enlarging Alliance can most effectively contribute to security if
it is surrounded by friends and partners. The NATO of tomorrow will
have to complete the task begun earlier this decade of bringing all
the democracies in the Euro-Atlantic region into a new cooperative
security system. That is why we are going to develop further our
Partnership for Peace - one of the most successful and imaginative
ideas for building trust and confidence that has ever been invented.
The practical benefits are enormous. We have learned in Bosnia that
when NATO works together with 20 Partner and other countries, we can
have a more effective coalition for peace. We can share burdens more
broadly and combine our experience as well as ressources. At the
Summit we will establish a new arrangement for wider Partner
participation in NATO-led crisis response and peace support
operations. Interoperability between Allies and Partners - a key means
of making joint operations work effectively - will increase.

And in our wider consultative forum - the Euro-Atlantic Partnership
Council - we will expand the range of security issues on which we work
together with our 24 EAPC Partners.

At the same time, we will not have a secure Europe if we cannot
successfully integrate Russia into our future security system. Russia
will probably remain a country of contradictions for some time to
come. But Russia is too important to ignore and its cooperation can
make the solution of problems so much easier for us - whether in
Europe or beyond. So we have to build on all of the possibilities of
cooperation that exist and try to prevent our disagreements from
turning into crises. Our objective has to be a mature and pragmatic
relationship where disagreement in one area does not prevent us from
achieving progress in other areas, particularly where our interests
coincide.

As we have discussed in our NATO/Russia Permanent Joint Council over
the past year issues such as ethnic conflicts, terrorism, natural
disasters, proliferation and tactical nuclear weapons, we have
discovered, more often than not, that our interests actually do
coincide. And even when we have had to agree to disagree, our lines of
communication have remained healthy, and both sides have respected the
right of the others to act independently. Of course, our preference is
to act together when possible, as in Bosnia. So I am confident that
NATO-Russia relations are going to develop, even if the pace will not
always be as rapid as we would wish.

We will also pursue deeper cooperation with Ukraine, a country whose
future is critical to security in Europe. We will strengthen our
consultation through the NATO-Ukraine Commission, which will meet at
the level of Heads of State and Government the day after the NATO
Summit.

One lesson that we have learned from Bosnia, and which we are now
applying in Kosovo, is that diplomacy can often only succeed when it
is backed up with the credible threat of military force. That is why
we are ready to act if President Milosevic does not show a more
flexible and constructive attitude to the crisis in Kosovo at the
Peace Talks which resume in Paris today.

We are ready to provide a NATO-led international military force to
ensure that an agreement, once reached, is effectively implemented.
The European Allies will provide most of the troops. But US
involvement is crucial. It will demonstrate in the most concrete way
the essential transatlantic unity of purpose without which we simply
cannot solve problems like Bosnia and Kosovo.

As Secretary General of the Alliance would like to express my profound
gratitude to the government and people of the United States, including
the men and women who are contributing so much so well to the cause of
peace in the Balkans.

Only NATO has the combination of diplomatic and military instruments,
and the essential transatlantic dimension, to handle these types of
challenges successfully. At the Washington Summit, and as we finalize
our new Strategic Concept, the Alliance needs to recognize what the US
had known for some time: that NATO's increasing involvement in crisis
management and peace support operations is going to require different
types of forces than we had in the days when territorial defence was
our main, if not, sole mission.

We need to stay abreast of the rapid advances in military technology
and avoid a technology gap between the US and other Allies. We are
therefore developing a Defence Capabilities Initiative to be launched
at the Summit that will build on our traditional planning and
coordination procedures.

Similarly, we need to ensure that the Alliance has the flexibility and
the right military composition to ensure we can tackle the challenges
ahead. That is why we have reformed the NATO command structure to
reflect the new contingencies and new demands that our military forces
will have to confront in future.

But one of these new contingencies is the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction. NATO will have to become more closely involved in
international efforts to curb proliferation. Naturally our efforts
have to be consistent with those of other bodies, and we have to add
value rather than duplicate. But we have the security expertise and
transatlantic framework to reinforce international non-proliferation
efforts. The Washington Summit will announce a NATO initiative to
equip the Alliance to cope with this challenge in a more focused way.

The NATO of the future is going to have a great deal more to do than
the NATO of the past. And that means that the transatlantic
Partnership which is the source of all of NATO's dynamism will have to
be adapted to allow the responsibilities and burdens of NATO's new
roles and missions to be divided more equitably. A stronger role of
the European Allies in security and defense is an idea whose time has
come. It is no longer realistic to expect the United States to provide
the bulk of the leadership or the bulk of the forces for every NATO
operation, even if that US leadership and resources will continue to
be the decisive factor in dealing with the most important security
challenges and crisis situations.

As the global super power, the United States is upholding security on
many other continents and these commitments also benefit Europe's
security and prosperity. So it is reasonable for the United States to
expect the Europeans to play a larger role within the Euro-Atlantic
area itself.

So we are designing a more flexible NATO which will give the Europeans
the ability to act and to conduct military operations when the US does
not wish to be involved. This European Security and Defence Identity
will of course be developed in full transparency and consultation with
the United States and Canada. It will be fully compatible with the new
NATO and will indeed be anchored in NATO.

A NATO based on a strong Europe and a strong America is our best
guarantee that our democratic values will be as prevalent at the end
of the 21st century as they are today at the end of the 20th.

Already the Europeans are showing that they have the will and not only
the aspiration to play a larger role. Seventy percent of the
Implementation Force in Bosnia is now European. In the former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia today, a French General is commanding NATO's
Extraction Force, charged with supporting the OSCE verifiers in
Kosovo. A British General will command the NATO-led implementation
force once we are able to deploy this in Kosovo. But they are also
NATO-led and under the overall military command of US General Wesley
Clark, the SACEUR.

Let me again emphasize: more Europe does not mean less America. Rather
it is a recognition that as we face the multiple challenges of the
future, neither continent and not even the global superpower the
United States, is going to be able to handle all of the problems
alone. Only by pooling our resources are we going to be successful. In
the 21st Century the Europeans will be America's sturdiest, most
reliable and most action-capable Partners. But the Europeans are going
to continue to need US leadership, expertise and resources to
stabilize their continent and keep at a respectable distance the
potential risks and dangers that history has never failed to produce.

Ladies and Gentlemen, fifty has often been called the "mid-life
crisis". But for most of us it is a time of calm maturity when we
appreciate the solid achievements of the past but still feel we have
enough youthful vigour in our bones to explore new opportunities and
reach out to new horizons. And so it will be for NATO in just a few
weeks time here in Washington. The focus will be on renewal, more than
on commemoration. We will toast the NATO of the last 50 years - and
why not? We have much to be proud of, even if there were times of
tension and conflict we hope never to repeat. But above all we will
lay the foundations to ensure NATO's continued vitality and success in
the next 50 years.

Predictions about the future have rarely come true. We do not know
what the next half century is going to bring; but it is almost certain
that in the age of globalisation and the fastest rate of change that
history has ever known, there will be no less turbulence and no fewer
surprises than in the last fifty years. The security partnership
between Europe and North America is our best guarantee that we will
emerge successfully from this experience and able to live our lives in
peace and freedom. It is not only the leaders of Europe and America,
but all our publics, who bear a common responsibility to keep that
partnership in NATO strong. I am confident that we will.

Thank you.

(end text)

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