NATO Candidate Countries Look Ahead to Responsibilities of Membership

July 6, 2002

RIGA, Latvia  — Hopes were high at a summit of 10 former communist countries aspiring to join NATO, and many delegates on Saturday already were looking ahead to the responsibilities of membership.


The leaders of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia and Macedonia pledged to accelerate reforms and deepen democratic commitments to join the military alliance as they wrapped up two days of meetings in the Latvian capital.

"We recognize that we are in the midst of an historic endeavor, not only to defend our democracies from the threat to our freedoms posed by terrorism, but also to build a Europe that is truly whole and free," a summit declaration said.

"Thus, we set for ourselves the goal of acting in solidarity and as de facto allies — towards each other and towards those Western institutions we aspire to join," it said.

It was the countries' last joint meeting before a Nov. 21-22 NATO summit in Prague, where the 19-member alliance is expected to issue invitations for membership as part of its most dramatic transformation since it was formed 53 years ago.

President Bush said in a videotaped address that NATO's eastward expansion was necessary to secure democracy and stability after the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

"We seek a new Europe that has buried its historic tensions and is prepared to meet global challenges beyond Europe's borders," Bush said. "NATO must prepare itself to fight and defeat terror, and the other threats to freedom that we face together."

The three ex-Soviet Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, along with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia lead the list of countries expected to get the coveted invitations, although NATO diplomats stressed that no decision would be made before the summit in the Czech capital.

Many hailed the expansion as an important step toward the long-awaited reunification of Europe after World War II. The region was divided by mistrust between East and West during the Cold War.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser to former President Jimmy Carter, called it "the final undoing in Europe of the legacies of the Stalin-Hitler act," the secret nonaggression pact at the beginning of World War II.

Delegates also stressed the importance of a recently strengthened cooperation between the alliance and its former Cold War enemy, Russia, which opposes the expansion but has toned down its rhetoric recently.

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