20 March 1998
(NATO's first new members should not be its last) (650) By Wendy S. Ross USIA White House Correspondent Washington -- President Clinton said March 20 he was confident the US Senate "will overwhelmingly" vote to add Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to full membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but emphasized that "NATO's first new members should not be its last. "Keeping the doors open to all of Europe's new democracies will help to ensure that enlargement benefits the security of the entire region, not just the first three new members," he said at a special event in the East Room of the White House prior to his departure for a 12 day trip to Sub-Saharan Africa. The Senate began debate the evening of March 17 on a resolution that would ratify protocols admitting the three East European nations to the alliance, and final vote on the measure is expected next week. A number of amendments are pending. Clinton urged the Senate "to reject any effort to impose an artificial pause on the process of enlargement. Such a mandate is unnecessary and, I believe, unwise," he said. "If NATO is to remain strong, America's freedom to lead it must be unfettered and our freedom to cooperate with our other partners in NATO must remain unfettered. "A unilateral freeze on enlargement would reduce our own country's flexibility and, perhaps even more important, our leverage, our ability to influence our partners. It would fracture NATO's open-door consensus, it would undermine further reforms in Europe's democracies, it would draw a new and potentially destabilizing line, at least temporarily, in Europe." Clinton said "There are other steps we must take to prevent that division from re-emerging. We must continue to strengthen the Partnership for Peace (PFP) with our many friends in Europe. We need to give even more practical expression to the agreements between NATO and Russia, and NATO and Ukraine, turning words into deeds." Senator William Roth, (Republican-Delaware), who chairs the Senate NATO Observer Group, March 18 sent a letter signed by a bipartisan group of Senators urging their colleagues to vote against any proposal to freeze future enlargement. Such a proposal would repudiate Article 10 of NATO's charter and would reduce U.S. "flexibility and leverage" within the alliance, the letter said. Attending the White House event were a bipartisan group of Senators who support Clinton's NATO policy, including Roth, academics and members of the President's foreign policy team including National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Henry "Hugh" Shelton, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Roth pointed out that Congress has endorsed NATO enlargement 14 times over the last three years, and said he predicts an overwhelming vote for it again. JCS Chairman Shelton said adding Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to the NATO alliance together with the PFP program and the NATO-Russia Founding Act, transforms "yesterday's Iron Curtain into a picture window." Secretary Albright said "when all is said and done" the Senate will reaffirm the principle that our alliance is, and will be, open. She said Senate ratification of NATO's first new members in many years will be "a giant step toward a Europe that is finally and forever undivided and at peace...something for which I have been praying nearly all my life." Albright was born just prior to the World War II in the former Czechoslovakia but moved to the United States with her family as a young girl. White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry told reporters that President Clinton held the White House event "to once again make the compelling case that the expansion of NATO is in America's vital strategic interest and he wanted to do so obviously because the Senate debate is now underway," and before he begins his trip to Africa.