Reinforcing NATO's strength in the West and deepening cooperation with the East - includes a related article, a statement by Pres. Clinton on the UN-NATO airstrikes against Bosnian Serbs, May 25 1995 - Sec. of State Warren Christopher, May 30,1995 - Transcript

US Department of State Dispatch,  June 5, 1995  

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Opening statement at the North Atlantic Council Ministerial Meeting,

Noordwijk, The Netherlands, May 30, 1995

Mr. Secretary General, distinguished colleagues and friends: I am honored to join you once again as President d'Honneur of the North Atlantic Council. I would like to welcome those ministers who have joined us since our last meeting in December. On behalf of all the members of the council, let me extend to you the assurance of the close cooperation that is the strength of this alliance.

Fifty years since the end of World War II, our ministerial meeting marks an important occasion for reflection. We have begun to put in place a comprehensive security architecture that will advance peace and stability across Europe.

NATO remains the central security pillar of Europe and the core institution for linking the security of North America to Europe. In the last five years, NATO has undertaken sweeping changes to match the sweep of Europe's transformation.

While maintaining NATO's core defensive role, we are adapting its military forces to address the new demands of crisis management and peacekeeping. We are supporting a capable European defense identity and a broader role for the Western European Union. We are building enduring ties between NATO and the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. And tomorrow, the alliance will take an important step to develop its dialogue with Russia.

Three weeks ago in Moscow, Russia agreed to proceed with its participation in the Partnership for Peace and to move ahead with a broader dialogue with NATO. We welcome that development. Russia's decision to deepen its cooperation with Europe and North America enhances our ability to achieve our common goal of a truly integrated Europe.

Under the Partnership for Peace, Russia and the allies will conduct military exchanges, hold joint military exercises, and train together for peacekeeping. Beyond the Partnership, we will pursue an extensive dialogue on vital security issues, including nonproliferation and nuclear security. At tomorrow's 16-plus-1 meeting with Russia's Foreign Minister Kozyrev, and in the months ahead, we will launch this dialogue to define the framework for an expanded relationship with Russia.

The NATO-Russia relationship we are pursuing complements the other elements of our strategy: strengthening the Partnership for Peace, further strengthening the OSCE, and maintaining steady progress toward enlargement of both NATO and the European Union.

The Partnership for Peace gives form and substance to the new cooperative relationship between the alliance and its former adversaries. The Partnership has made impressive progress since last December. In my intervention today, I will put forward several proposals to strengthen the Partnership for the future.

Since its creation, NATO has always been open to adding new members. The process of enlargement is moving forward along the same steady, transparent course the allies set last year. We have begun to examine how enlargement will occur and its implications for European security. We will present our conclusions to interested partners this fall.

Each of these steps is an essential part of our effort to build a comprehensive security architecture for Europe. As we continue to adapt NATO, we must also continue our support for other institutions of security and economic cooperation. European integration, bolstered by the European Union, is helping to extend prosperity to all of Europe. And the strengthened Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe can and should play a central role in conflict prevention and crisis management.

This comprehensive strategy for European security will strengthen our ability in the future to prevent the kind of conflicts we are witnessing in the former Yugoslavia. Later today, we will have an opportunity to discuss in detail recent events in Bosnia. We look forward to discussing with all our NATO allies, including many valued troop contributors, the very important understandings we reached last night in the Contact Group. These include our conviction that UNPROFOR should remain in Bosnia, with the means to ensure it can carry out its mission safely and effectively. We also emphasized the need to sustain our vigorous diplomatic efforts. In the meantime, we unanimously agreed that the Bosnian Serbs must end their violations of UN resolutions and release all detained UN personnel immediately.

Our entire agenda today reminds us of the great importance of European integration--a process that has been fundamentally linked to the broader transatlantic relationship since the Marshall Plan years. Over the last several months, several of my colleagues in this room have made important contributions to our dialogue on reinforcing the bonds between Europe and the United States. I intend to address this timely set of issues later this week in Madrid. I will emphasize America's willingness to bolster the transatlantic relationship by taking additional steps to strengthen our political consultations and economic ties.