Prague Summit will be a turning point for NATO, says Lord Robertson
NATO Secretary General George Robertson has said the Prague Summit will be a turning point for NATO. According to Lord Robertson, new members, new missions and new military capabilities will transform the alliance; he says that while enlargement is high on the agenda, it should not obscure the most important tasks facing the alliance.
"The biggest point of the summit is not enlargement which will be historic, it is NATO making itself relevant for the threats and the challenges of the 21st century. And there are going to be some people I suppose who will demonstrate against us and Prague. And as somebody who once demonstrated in his very early youth I would say that our organization is no anti-peace maker, we're in to stopping conflicts, not participating in conflicts."
While the Summit proper begins in two days time, Lord Robertson is due to hold talks with the Czech President Vaclav Havel at Prague Castle on Wednesday. Before he became a lord or even a politician, George Robertson was a student at Scotland's Dundee University. Here he recalls how news from the Czech capital made an impression on him during his final year.
"I graduated from university in 1968, and in August of 1968 I remember standing in a small apartment in Dundee where I'd been a student, and listening to the radio about the Soviet tanks entering Prague - that affected me deeply at that time. So when I come to Prague that thought will be on my mind, that at that age that long ago I felt a passion and a commitment that it was wrong."
