Europe to Widen Its Role in NATO

NATO foreign ministers, smoothing over years of bickering between the United States and France, agreed Monday to restructure Washington’s oldest and most successful alliance by turning over to European members greater responsibility for the common defense.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher called the action historic and said it remakes the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, created almost 50 years ago to combat the Soviet Union, into a more flexible force focused on the dangers of the next century.

“This is a win, win, win situation for everyone,” Christopher told a news conference. Alliance Secretary-General Javier Solana concurred that the meeting produced “a new NATO.”

The plan permits European members of the 16-nation alliance to take on peacekeeping, crisis management and other military tasks without full U.S. participation. However, the Europeans could augment their force with NATO intelligence, logistics and transportation units, most of which are American.

Christopher said European-centered operations would require the unanimous approval of all NATO members, including the United States. Other U.S. officials said the NATO supreme commander, a post always filled by an American general, would retain overall authority.

The plan is a watered-down version of a French proposal that would have given the Europeans a much freer hand to undertake military actions with only limited American participation.

Nevertheless, French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette said Paris is now ready to complete a process that began in December and fully re-integrate with NATO’s military arm--which then-President Charles de Gaulle pulled out of 30 years ago--if the new plan meets France’s expectations.

“France is ready, at the proper time--not today--to take its full place in this new alliance,” De Charette said.

A senior French official said the U.S. military initially resisted the step, forcing NATO aides into weeks of bargaining to produce the compromise language approved by the foreign ministers.

However, Christopher asserted, “Clearly the result is one that our own military has not only supported but advocated.”

In a related matter, the NATO ministers approved a formula for combining the military forces of NATO with those of non-NATO countries such as Russia. The peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Herzegovina is such an arrangement, although it was established on an ad hoc basis.

“It gives NATO the internal capacity to plan for missions like IFOR [the Bosnia force] so we don’t have to start from scratch,” Christopher said.

Clearly worried that presumptive Republican presidential candidate Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas might charge that the Clinton administration is potentially placing U.S. forces under European command, U.S. officials stressed that no American units will participate in European-centered operations without full U.S. control.

Moreover, one senior administration official said it is unlikely that the Europeans will ever go it alone on anything more significant than limited search-and-rescue operations or low-risk crisis management.

“I don’t think there is any threat out there that meets the criteria that the Europeans are looking at,” the official said. “In the real world, when real threats develop, the United States will be there.”

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Later Monday, Christopher met at his hotel with foreign ministers of 12 Eastern European and Baltic nations that hope to join NATO. The ministers were in Berlin for today’s meeting of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, the post-Cold War organization that joins NATO with its former Communist adversaries.

Christopher meets several times a year with the Eastern European and Baltic officials to reassure them on the pace of NATO’s expansion schedule.

Responding to Christopher’s welcome, Latvian Foreign Minister Valdis Birkavs said the reorganization plans approved Monday, along with other forms of cooperation that NATO has already established with former Soviet Bloc nations, should help clear the way for eventual expansion of the alliance.

“Six years ago, the allies showed a political will that led to the first enlargement of NATO, with German reunification,” Birkavs said.

Although the NATO communique said the ministers reaffirmed their “commitment to open the alliance to new members,” the subject of expansion was given a soft-pedal treatment in Berlin. Officials said the expansion schedule, already established, calls for a study this year with decisions to be made in December. No action was expected at this session.

Nevertheless, the alliance clearly was unwilling to emphasize expansion when Russia is only two weeks away from a crucial election. Any NATO discussion of expanding the alliance to include Moscow’s former allies would be a political embarrassment to Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

In an attempt to accentuate the positive aspects of Russia’s relations with the United States and its NATO allies, Christopher is scheduled to meet Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov no less than four times today.