Entry Is Only 1st Hurdle for NATO Initiates

The chief of computer services in the logistics department of Poland’s air force reads English easily. Now he must learn to speak it well.

“I don’t have experience talk with people,” Maj. Dariusz Turkiewicz explained, speaking in slightly broken English during a break from classes at the Polish military’s language academy here. “But now we have to join with NATO. It’s very important. In my profession, I must learn. I must! First, my chief orders me. Second, I want. Important!”

Language is just one of the issues Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic must deal with as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization extends its nuclear umbrella over them. They are scheduled to formally enter the alliance Friday in a ceremony in Independence, Mo., where President Harry S. Truman announced in 1949 the formation of the Atlantic alliance to defend Western Europe against the Soviet Bloc.

All three countries have done everything seen as necessary--from upgrading technology to passing new laws--for NATO to be able to defend them beginning Friday.

But the incoming members will need years to upgrade weapons, further boost knowledge of English and improve other aspects of training and organization before they can exercise their full potential within the alliance.

“This is certainly a milestone and not an end,” said a Hungary-based diplomat from a NATO country who requested anonymity. The three nations “come in with a capability that meets the minimum requirements from a NATO perspective.”

What is required, above all, from the first day of membership is that each country have the ability to track and identify all aircraft and missiles in or near its airspace and share that information securely and instantaneously with NATO partners. Each now has state-of-the-art air-traffic surveillance and control equipment linked to NATO’s system.

“If there is an umbrella of atomic weapons, it means Polish airspace must be included in NATO airspace control and there must be the ability to bring land forces from NATO--not only for training but massive land forces,” explained Jaroslaw Guzy, a former Polish assistant defense minister who heads the Polish-North Atlantic Club, a nonprofit group formed to support NATO membership.

The need for such readiness applies to all three nations, although Poland--in part because it is so close to Russia--is placing the most emphasis on the issue. All three also see joining the alliance as a key step toward closer ties with Western Europe and membership in the European Union.

The incoming members also have boosted their ability to keep secrets, with everything from encryption devices for secure telecommunications to rooms that are safe from electronic eavesdropping to new laws for screening personnel with access to classified information.

In the Hungarian capital, Budapest, special foil designed to counter electronic eavesdropping has been placed on the windows of key offices. That came amid talk that spies could hide electronic equipment in boats on the Danube River to catch conversations in government offices, many of which face the water.

“Before, we didn’t pay enough attention to protecting our buildings, our telephones, our faxes against electronic surveillance,” said Istvan Gyarmati, a special advisor on security policy in the Hungarian Foreign Ministry. With the help of NATO expertise and technology, Hungary now meets the minimum necessary standards for keeping secrets, Gyarmati said.

Perhaps the most embarrassing incident in the months leading toward NATO membership came in the Czech Republic. The identity of the top intelligence officer at the British Embassy in the capital, Prague, who presumably was working in cooperation with the Czech government against outside threats, was leaked to the media.

The leak, apparently by current and former members of the Czech counterintelligence service, led to comments by national leaders fearful that NATO’s trust in their country had been damaged.

The officials’ public discussion of the issue only compounded the problem, said a Western diplomat who requested anonymity. Among diplomats in Prague from NATO nations, there is “the wish the Czechs would learn to say, ‘We don’t comment on intelligence matters,’ ” he added.

Poland has the largest military establishment of the three countries with its 240,000-member armed forces, but it badly needs a larger number of English-speaking personnel to realize its full potential as a NATO partner. The Czech Republic, with 59,000 members in its armed forces, and Hungary, with 43,000, have a considerably higher percentage of English speakers.

English is required not only for the incoming members’ representatives at NATO headquarters but for soldiers involved in multinational or peacekeeping missions.

It also is important for many who hold desk jobs at home. Turkiewicz, the computer specialist in logistics, is worried about using English in dealing with the maintenance and resupplying of NATO aircraft that land in Poland.

The need to learn military jargon isn’t neglected in language courses. The Poles, depending on their need, may study “NATO-speak, sea-speak and sky-talk,” said Jozef Kowalewski, coordinator of language programs at the Military University of Technology in Warsaw.

Poland has outfitted eight of its old MIG-29 fighters with the equipment needed to cooperate with NATO forces, and has trained about a dozen pilots with what they need to know to use it--including the new jargon. The incoming members also plan to buy new Western-made aircraft.

“To belong to NATO’s rapid reaction force, we had to learn how to fly again,” said Maj. Ryszard Czelinski, a pilot quoted in the Polish daily Super Express. “In Poland, all instructions and orders are in descriptive form--for example, ‘Fly north’ or ‘Go down 500 meters.’ NATO uses hundreds of special radio codes. Each letter and each number mean something. If the leader says, ‘Tango Whiskey GX5,’ then I know I’m supposed to fly in a certain direction at a certain height.”

Grasping NATO’s way of doing things is important partly because the incoming members are anxious to show that they are not just beneficiaries.

Poland has already declared its willingness to send troops to the strife-torn Serbian province of Kosovo as part of any NATO peacekeeping mission. The Czech Republic will make available to NATO its world-class unit for detecting chemical weapons. Hungary is offering an engineering battalion with experience rebuilding bridges in Croatia, and has expressed a willingness to contribute medical personnel if NATO sends forces to Kosovo, where ethnic Albanian rebels are seeking independence from Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia.

In many ways, however, the incoming members are focused not on preparing for war but on the benefits of peace. They see NATO membership as bringing tighter integration into Europe and providing guarantees for their own democracies. They also hope to help NATO countries develop better relations with Russia and other countries to the east that fear NATO enlargement marks a new dividing line in Europe.

“It isn’t fear of Russia, it’s fear of instability” that underlies the Czech desire to be part of NATO, said Karel Pezl, a former general who is an advisor to President Vaclav Havel. “We belong among those states with certain values, philosophical values of life and views of the world which have European-Atlantic roots: freedom, market mechanisms, tolerance.”

Col. Miroslaw Staniszewski, one of the top Polish officers at NATO’s new Multinational Corps Northeast--to be made up of German, Danish and Polish troops and to be headquartered beginning later this year in Poland’s Baltic coast city of Szczecin--stressed that joining NATO “will give us a clear future as a full member of European society.”

Ela Kasprzycka of The Times’ Warsaw Bureau contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Expanding NATO

Current NATO members

Belgium

Britain

Canada

Denmark

France

Germany

Greece

Iceland

Italy

Luxembourg

Netherlands

Norway

Portugal

Spain

Turkey

United States