NATO makes landmark decisions at Prague summit
World leaders from over 40 countries, including the US president George Bush, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the French President Jacques Chirac, are meeting in Prague for the biggest summit in NATO's history. According to NATO Secretary General George Robertson, the first day of the summit has been groundbreaking in many ways:
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization today officially invited 7 east European states to join the alliance. These seven east European countries will be admitted to NATO in 2004, after being formally approved by all 19 current members.
Ian Willoughby has been following the developments in the Prague Congress Centre.
Following this morning's announcement that seven countries have been invited to join, they have now been formally welcomed by the Czech president Vaclav Havel, who of course, is the host of the summit, and those countries are Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and the three Baltic states. The leaders of all those countries have been making speeches saying very upbeat things, for example Valdas Adamkas, the president of Lithuania, said that his country had always belonged culturally and spiritually to the West, and all of the leaders have been making similar speeches. Interesting is that most of the major decisions seem to have been made already, and let's hear what the NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson had to say earlier today:
"NATO's presidents and prime ministers have today each made a firm political commitment to deliver specific essential military enhancement. And they have established a NATO response force, a cutting-edge, high capability addition to NATO's force structure, and they've mandated a major streamlining of the alliance command arrangements, together with a radical reform package to modernise NATO's headquarters and its way of working. As part of our transformation, we've intensified our partnership process, which involves twenty seven non-NATO nations, and upgraded NATO's Mediterranean dialogue. Tomorrow we'll demonstrate the vitality of these relationships in meetings of the NATO-Russia Council, the NATO-Ukraine Commission, and of course the forty six-strong Euroatlantic Partnership Council."
One major decision is the approval of a NATO rapid reaction force and that's hugely important because it's the first time that NATO will be going, as they call it, out of area'. That means that NATO won't just be based in Europe and that's a major change because this rapid reaction force will be ready, they expect something like 20,000 soldiers, it will be ready to go as they say out of area' and to take part in missions outside Europe.
And we know that president Bush has been very eager to get a commitment on Iraq. Has there been a statement on Iraq?
Yes, there has been a statement on Iraq, it was made after lunch, although the thigh about it is there's nothing really new in it, to be honest. It was simply a reiteration of the long standing commitment to the UN Security Council resolution, which calls on Iraq to disarm. Although I must say that George Robertson seemed particularly pleased that the joint statement had been made so quickly.
There was a very short period during which discussions took place, and nothing was watered down at all. It is as it is. It took, I think, twenty four hours for that to emerge as a draft, and then to be endorsed by the nineteen governments. I think that's approximately forty one days quicker than the United Nations, but I can't be certain about that. But the statement is an important one and it speaks for itself.
