Christopher Calls for Charter That Would Link Old Foes NATO and Russia

Secretary of State Warren Christopher called Friday for a new East-West charter linking Russia with NATO, joining the Cold War enemies in a partnership to build “a new Europe.”

Christopher coupled his charter proposal, apparently intended to ease Russian opposition to North Atlantic Treaty Organization expansion, with an announcement that NATO presidents and prime ministers will meet next year, probably in the spring or early summer, to start picking Central and East European countries for membership in the alliance.

Although Christopher said Russia’s assault on the separatist republic of Chechnya showed that the Kremlin still has not completely overcome its repressive past, he said it is time to bring Moscow into the European mainstream, both economically and politically.

“I want to say this to the Russian people: We welcome you as our full partners in building a new Europe that is free of tyranny, division and war,” Christopher said.

“We seek a fundamentally new relationship between Russia and the new NATO,” he said, proposing a charter that would guarantee “standing arrangements for consultation and joint action” between Moscow and the alliance. “Our troops should train together for joint operations,” he added.

Christopher set out his vision of post-Cold War Europe during ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of a speech by then-Secretary of State James F. Byrnes in the same Stuttgart opera house in which Byrnes pledged the support of the victorious Americans for the reconstruction of defeated Germany after World War II.

Although the Byrnes speech has for the most part long been forgotten in the United States, it is commemorated every year in Germany, usually without such high-level American participation.

In his speech, Christopher said that NATO expansion, which Russia opposes, “is on track, and it will happen.”

The alliance decided to open its membership in January 1994. Since then, officials have been drafting membership criteria. NATO foreign ministers are scheduled to adopt those rules in December. Although it has long been assumed that a summit meeting will be required to pick new members, Christopher’s speech was the first confirmation that the session is expected in the first half of next year.

The former Soviet satellites of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are thought to be the leading candidates for membership, although the alliance has steadfastly refused to say which countries will be accepted.

U.S. officials conceded that some of NATO’s 16 members think the alliance is moving too quickly to welcome new members, but they said the alliance’s major countries all support the planned schedule. In contrast, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole has complained that the pace is much too slow.

For Christopher, who was a 21-year-old naval officer in 1946, and for most of his audience of German VIPs, the nostalgia of Friday’s event overshadowed the dry details of foreign policy.

Stuttgart Mayor Manfred Rommel, the son of the Nazi field marshal known as the “Desert Fox,” said, “We Germans have come to know it was much better not to have won the war under Hitler.” He praised the United States for its postwar generosity, which he said was “unprecedented in history.”

German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, in his own speech preceding Christopher’s address, interrupted his litany of U.S.-German friendship with a complaint about “the problems and irritations caused by America’s sanctions legislation regarding Cuba, Iran and Libya.” He was referring to bills passed by Congress this year punishing foreign firms that do business with the three countries.

Christopher gave no ground on the issue, saying, “Our principled commitment to free trade simply does not oblige us to do business with aggressive tyrannies like Iran and Libya.”