U.S. Moves Toward NATO Expansion but Key Decisions Delayed
DANIEL WILLIAMS AND R. JEFFREY SMITH (WASHINGTON POST STAFF WRITERS)
(C) 1994 THE WASHINGTON POST (LEGI-SLATE ARTICLE NO. 215904)
The United States is for the first time drawing up some minimum
requirements for Eastern European countries to join NATO, but Washington is
still delaying key decisions on when the alliance would bring anyone in, and
who it would be.
While Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and others are pressing hard to
enter, the Clinton administration and its European allies worry that rapid
NATO expansion would upset Russia.
Suspicious that the alliance's aim is to isolate it, Moscow opposes any
eastward extension of NATO security guarantees.
President Clinton and national security adviser Anthony Lake are
nonetheless said by other senior officials and diplomats to favor moving more
rapidly toward that goal as a way of damping European fears a more
nationalist Russia could pose a new security threat.
The new U.S. proposal, being readied for a December NATO foreign
ministers' meeting, represents a compromise between providing no further
guidance to the Eastern European countries and providing clear criteria.
The one-size-fits-all formula is designed to give hope to eager NATO
candidates, yet still placate Moscow by continuing to defer the political
decision to admit someone.
The administration has depicted its new guidance as "precepts." A U.S.
official said the requirements include continued commitment to democracy,
assured civilian control of the military and a readiness to contribute to the
country's defense. As described by U.S. officials, the precepts are rules
meant to provide more concrete guideposts to NATO membership but, pointedly,
do not guarantee it.
"Don't make too big a deal of what we're up to," a senior U.S. official
cautioned. "The near-term goal is to get the alliance to agree to begin a
formal process, aimed at defining what it will take to expand. The potential
new partners have to know what they must bring to the table."
Lake ordered the precepts developed because he and Clinton want at least
to give the appearance there is movement toward expansion, U.S. officials
said.
Administration officials are sensitive to criticism they are missing a
historic moment to bind Eastern Europe to the West and to help redress
abandonment of the region to Soviet rule after World War II.
Some U.S. government analysts have also forecast Russia could turn more
belligerent if there are nationalist gains in elections in late 1995 and
1996.
Critics, among them former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, assert
the most promising Eastern European democracies - Poland, Czech Republic,
Hungary and perhaps the Slovak Republic - ought to be let into NATO for
immediate protection.
But Germany and France, in particular, are hesitant to provoke an even
greater right-wing upsurge in Russia, and also worry that letting some of
these countries into NATO while leaving others outside it will forge a new
political line of demarcation between East and West.
They prefer to see Central European military integration with NATO as an
afterthought to its economic integration with the European Union.
The Eastern Europeans see NATO membership more as a refuge from a
reassertion of Russian dominance, and they are scrambling to be first in
line.
"There is intense pressure over the question of membership from Eastern
European governments," a senior official said.
The December meeting is to build upon last January's NATO summit where
the alliance unveiled Partnership for Peace, an American-designed program of
military cooperation with former adversaries of the defunct East bloc.
The partnership was billed as a waiting-room for NATO membership,
although the wait could be long: No rules or timetable for full entry were
laid out.
Besides the Moscow factor, the go-slow approach reflects an unwillingness
of Washington and its allies to take on new security commitments or provide
significant funding for expansion.
Will Western troops or equipment be sent eastward for stationing?
Including nuclear weapons? What precisely will Eastern Europe offer NATO?
Germany, despite occasional calls from top officials for expansion, is
eager for neither a timetable nor criteria to be laid down. France also is
not keen for NATO expansion. On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary Douglas
Hurd predicted Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Slovak Republic
"will succeed" in becoming NATO members.
But he also told a parliamentary questioner: "No dates have been fixed."
Some U.S. officials assert countries likely to be admitted in the
foreseeable future know who they are, and that to list them formally would
only create divisions. But during a recent meeting in Buffalo, N.Y., U.N.
Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright told Poland's President Lech Walesa his
country would be among the first to be let in.
From time to time there are hints of a deadline, mostly from people in or
near the White House while many officials at the Defense Department and much
of the State Department remain wary.
Not long ago, Sandy Vershbow, the National Security Council's top
European hand, told foreign reporters he could foresee NATO expansion in the
first half of a Clinton second term.
But Pentagon officials worry, for example, that a country admitted too
soon might revert to authoritarian or communist leadership, or perhaps
provoke ethnic conflict, saddling the West with the task of defending a
government with ignoble aims.
Opponents of the idea within the administration say Clinton and Lake were
dissuaded last year from setting a timetable for NATO membership and hope
they may be talked out of moving too aggressively now.
The focus on responsibilities of the would-be members puts the ball - and
initially, the costs of realigning their armies and learning how to
coordinate them with NATO - largely in their court.
"We have to make sure countries that are going to join are not merely
consumers," one U.S. official said.
In the precepts proposed by Washington, criteria or minimum requirements
will not be spelled out - for instance, whether a country is prepared to
contribute air power to NATO, or whether it has held enough free elections to
qualify as a settled democracy, the senior U.S. official said. These issues
are being studied among the allies, and are not ready for presentation to the
would-be members.
"Precepts are things we will take into account for membership," another
U.S. official said. "That doesn't mean you get in if you meet them all, or
are locked out if you don't."
This all seems something akin to explaining the rules of baseball to a
child without telling him how to score, but U.S. officials insist there is
method in this approach.
Because Russian officials regard NATO as an anti-Moscow alliance,
Washington hopes to assuage Moscow's fears by first locking it into a series
of cooperative relationships with the West. Once that is accomplished, NATO
expansion will not seem threatening, U.S. officials reason.
Already, Russian President Boris Yeltsin has been made an associate
member of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies consisting of the
United States, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Canada. The G-7
Plus One, as it is now sometimes called, takes up political and economic
issues at yearly summits.
Moscow also has been granted a direct line of consultation with NATO on
major issues and established ties with Western groups, including the European
Union and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The deliberate pacing also gives time for Russian liberals, regarded as
less opposed to NATO expansion than nationalist conservatives, time and
resources to convince the public Russia has nothing to fear from NATO. "We
certainly don't want to do anything that would do serious damage to the
forces of reform (in Russia)," a senior U.S. official said.
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date=11/7/94
type=correspondent report
number=2-168866
title=Czech / Pen (l only)
byline=Alena Kenclova
dateline=Prague
content=
not voiced at:
Intro: The 61st World Congress of the International Pen Club
opened in Prague on Monday. Alena Kenclova reports from the
Czech capital that the congress is being held in the first time
in the 70-year history of the writers' organization in a country
that previously was under communist domination.
Text: The opening remarks by Czech president Vaclav Havel
highlighted the democratic progress made by some East European
countries since the Berlin wall came down five years ago.
Mr. Havel, a former dissident playwright, said only a revolution
in his country enabled him to participate in a world congress of
the international Pen for the first time. The communist regime
never allowed him to attend before. Mr. Havel is a member of the
national Pen in his country.
So is Hungarian president Arpad Goenz, who sent a message to the
world congress. More than 400 writers are participating in
meeting and public discussions and readings.
The writers-in-prison committee will review the cases of
persecution and even killings of authors for exercising their
right to freedom of expression. The committee's president,
Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, says the committee lists more than 900
cases of writers who have been imprisoned, threatened or face
different kinds of persecution. She said particularly alarming
reports had come from Turkey and China. Mrs. Leedom-Ackerman said
the fact that the name of Vaclav Havel topped this international
Pen list of persecuted writers still in the middle of 1989 is a
demonstration of the change that has taken place.
One writer faced with death threats at home, Taslima Nasrin of
Bangladesh, is in Prague for the congress and will participate in
the committee's session. Mrs. Nasrin escaped to Sweden in
August. According to president of the Czech Pen, Jiri Stransky,
the congress is still trying to bring to Prague the Nobel-prize
winning author Wole Soyinka after his UNESCO passport was seized
by Nigerian authorities.
Mr. Havel urged writers to become more involved in politics and
assume more global public responsibility to help eliminate
intolerance that leads to disastrous conflicts. (Signed)
neb/ak/mh/cf
07-Nov-94 8:49 am est (1349 utc)
nnnn
source: Voice of America
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RFE/RL Daily Report
No. 212, 8 November 1994
LATEST HUNGARIAN ECONOMIC FIGURES. According to economic data
published by MTI on 4 November, Hungary's foreign trade deficit
will probably reach $2.8 billion by the end of 1994. During the
first nine months of the year, the value of exports was $7.36
billion, while imports reached $10.1 billion. Trade with Germany
accounted for one-third of both imports and exports. Exports to
Western industrial countries grew 21% over last year's figures,
but exports to developing countries fell by 15%. Some $900 million
of foreign capital was invested in Hungary from January through
September, along with another $109 worth of machinery and other
industrial items. Industrial production grew 8.4% in the first 8
months of 1994 and 16.3% over the previous year. -- Judith Pataki,
RFE/RL, Inc.
[As of 1200 CET]
(Compiled by Sharon Fisher and Pete Baumgartner)
Copyright 1994, RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
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