NATO Ministers Approve Plan to Help E. Europe Nations

NATO foreign ministers on Thursday approved in principle a U.S. proposal to extend a security “partnership” to the formerly Communist nations of Eastern Europe, but they immediately began bickering about whether Ukraine and perhaps some other countries should be left out.

NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner said the ministers “very broadly welcomed” the U.S. plan, known as Partnership for Peace, which is intended to give a sort of associate membership to Eastern European nations, allowing them to cooperate with the Western alliance on military matters without giving them the sort of “attack on one is an attack on all” guarantees that NATO members extend to one another.

Action on the plan is expected Jan. 10 and 11, when heads of government of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization hold a summit meeting in Brussels.

U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher urged his fellow foreign ministers to offer the partnership to all former members of the Warsaw Pact--including Russia and the other 14 states created from the ruins of the Soviet Union--along with “other nations on whom we agree.”

Senior U.S. officials said the Clinton Administration wants to open the door to almost any European nation that might want to join, including countries such as Finland, Sweden and Switzerland, which sat out the Cold War. But other NATO sources said many European members of the alliance want to restrict membership, perhaps to Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

European efforts to reduce potential membership focused on Ukraine, which has angered the United States and its allies by refusing to get rid of the powerful nuclear arsenal that it inherited from the Soviet Union.

The Kiev government agreed almost two years ago to scrap the nuclear weapons and sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear state. But the Ukrainian Parliament has balked at ratifying the treaty.