ACCESSION NUMBER:325212
FILE ID:EUR305
DATE:02/02/94
TITLE:PEACE PARTNERSHIP "AN INVESTMENT IN EUROPE'S FUTURE" (02/02/94)
TEXT:*94020205.EUR
*EUR305   02/02/94 *

PEACE PARTNERSHIP "AN INVESTMENT IN EUROPE'S FUTURE"
(Oxman, Slocombe testify on NATO summit results)  (430)
By Jim Shevis
USIA Staff Writer
Washington -- Stephen A. Oxman, assistant secretary of state for European
and Canadian affairs, says the Clinton administration's plan for an
evolutionary process of membership expansion in the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization was the main achievement of the recent NATO summit meeting.

"It was the main headline," Oxman told the House Foreign Affairs
subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East at a February 2 hearing on the
summit's results and their implications for European security.

Partnership for Peace, as the plan is called, is "an investment in a future
Europe undivided between allies and enemies," Oxman said.

"Now we must put flesh and bones on this initiative," he said.  "We are
determined to move promptly to make it a reality."

Over the next few months, Oxman said, the administration's focus will be on
getting the plan up and running.

"NATO briefing teams are arriving in Eastern capitals as we speak to begin
implementing the partnership," Oxman said.

1alter B. Slocombe, principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy,
told the subcommittee: "We are off to a fast start."

Prospective partners' first task is to prepare a "presentation document" --
an outline of forces and assets they can bring to the partnership as well
as long-range defense planning goals and plans for meeting partnership
political objectives, Slocombe said.

"Work on the document is critical because it will help determine the scope,
pace and level of partner participation in NATO activities," Slocombe said.

"We envisage Partnership for Peace as affording individual countries a
chance to develop as rapidly as they are capable of doing," he said.

Slocombe said NATO administrators are currently developing plans for work
space to accommodate partner delegations both at NATO headquarters in
Brussels and in Mons, Belgium, where SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied
Powers Europe)  is located.

"We expect temporary arrangements to be available in a matter of weeks," he
said.  "Partner representatives will thereafter participate in appropriate
political and military bodies at NATO headquarters and at SHAPE."

Oxman said that, taken together, the summit decisions mark a "significant
and perhaps even historic" change in NATO's role in Europe.

"They reflect our determination to find new cooperative structures to meet
new security interests," he said.

"Our policies seek to integrate all of Europe based on shared values of
democracy, market economics and human-rights considerations, not to
re-divide it," Oxman said.

"NATO will play a key role in helping us achieve these objectives."
NNNN

.