NATO Considers Wider Role as Europe’s Peacekeeper

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Western alliance that won the Cold War, is struggling to carve out a new mission for itself--a mission that some members said Tuesday should be as a military peacekeeper for all of Europe, both East and West.

The alliance on Tuesday welcomed all but one of the republics of the former Soviet Union--the remnants of the superpower that NATO was formed to resist--into a new security body, the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. (The former Soviet republic of Georgia did not join.)

At the same time, the United States, Britain and other countries praised a Dutch proposal that could turn NATO into a military umbrella for all of Europe, not just the 16 member countries.

And--jumping into Europe’s hottest civil war--the NATO-led council endorsed a new European mediation mission to Nagorno-Karabakh, the region in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan where Armenians and Azerbaijanis have been fighting since 1988.

The rapid-fire diplomatic moves reflected a drive by the United States and other countries to restore a sense of purpose to NATO, which has been searching for a mission since the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Now we need to turn to (NATO’s) model of cooperation to quiet both ancient and new conflicts among neighbors to the east,” Secretary of State James A. Baker III said.

He praised a proposal by Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek that NATO offer to send peacekeeping troops to trouble spots, if the 48-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe approves. “It is an idea that we think well of,” Baker said.

Van den Broek told reporters that he envisions a system under which NATO could decide to send peacekeeping forces to “act under the aegis of the CSCE after it has exhausted its political mechanisms.”

But both Baker and Van den Broek noted that the idea has not yet been approved by NATO’s full membership.

A Dutch official said France and a few other countries have expressed reservations about the proposal. France, which does not participate in NATO military activities, wants the European Community to develop its own military command without the dominating presence of the United States.

The potential need for peacekeeping forces was painfully clear at the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, which had to discuss the warring between two members, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Armenian Foreign Minister Raffi Hovannisian and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Husein-Aga Sadykhov delivered long, passionate speeches denouncing each other’s government. The council quickly endorsed an offer from Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier to mediate the dispute in his role as current CSCE president.

Later Tuesday, Baker and the European Community foreign ministers agreed to move toward recognition of Yugoslavia’s secessionist republics, probably in April.

The EC has already recognized Croatia and Slovenia as independent countries, but the United States has not. Two more republics, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, have declared independence and asked for recognition from both the United States and the EC.