[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 20 (Monday, May 19, 1997)]
[Pages 708-711]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the NATO-Russia Founding Act and an Exchange With Reporters

May 14, 1997

    The President. Good afternoon. Today in Moscow, we have taken an 
historic step closer to a peaceful, undivided, democratic Europe for the 
first time in history. The agreement that NATO Secretary General Solana 
and Russian Foreign Minister Primakov have reached and which we expect 
to be approved by NATO's governing council this week, forms a practical 
partnership between NATO and Russia that will make America, Europe, and 
Russia stronger and more secure. The agreement builds on the 
understandings that I reached with President Yeltsin in Helsinki. It 
helps to pave the way for NATO, as it enlarges to take in new members, 
to build a new relationship with Russia that benefits all of us.
    In this century, Europe has suffered through two cold wars--through 
two World Wars and a cold war. And America has also paid a heavy price. 
Three years ago at the NATO summit in Brussels, I laid out a vision for 
a new, different Europe in the 21st century, an undivided Continent 
where our values of democracy and human rights, free

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markets and peace know no boundaries, where nations know that their 
borders are secure and their independence respected, where nations 
define their greatness by the promise of their people, not their power 
to dominate or destabilize.
    For 50 years, NATO has been at the core of Europe and America's 
security. From the start of my first administration, the United States 
has worked to adapt NATO to new missions in a new century, to open its 
doors to Europe's new democracies, to strengthen its ties to nonmembers 
through the Partnership For Peace, and to forge a strong, productive 
relationship between NATO and a free, democratic Russia. These are goals 
Republicans and Democrats alike share, building on the legacy of 
bipartisan leadership in Europe, begun after the war between President 
Truman, Secretary of State Marshall, and Senator Arthur Vandenberg.
    Today's agreement sets out a sustained cooperative relationship 
between NATO and Russia. NATO and Russia will consult and coordinate 
regularly. Where they all agree, they will act jointly as they are doing 
today in Bosnia. Russia will work closely with NATO but not within NATO, 
giving Russia a voice in but not a veto over NATO's business.
    I congratulate NATO Secretary General Solana and Russian Foreign 
Minister Primakov. I look forward to personally thanking Secretary 
General Solana for his remarkable work when he visits here next week.
    This agreement opens a way for a truly historic signing in Paris 
next month--or excuse me, it will be later this month now. Let me say 
that NATO's relationship with Russia is a part of a larger process to 
adapt NATO to new circumstances and new challenges in the 21st century. 
Just 8 weeks from now in Madrid, NATO will invite the first new members 
to join our Alliance. Its doors will remain open to all those ready to 
shoulder the burdens of membership. The first new members will not be 
the last.
    NATO, working with Russia and other friends of freedom, will see 
that we work to prevent a return to national rivalries, to defeat new 
threats to peace and freedom and prosperity, like the ethnic rivalries 
that have torn Bosnia asunder, terrorism and weapons proliferation.
    This March in Helsinki, President Yeltsin and I agreed that despite 
our differences over NATO enlargement, the relationship between the 
United States and Russia and the benefits to all of cooperation between 
NATO and Russia were too important to be jeopardized. And we set out the 
principles for how NATO and Russia could cooperate. Those form the basis 
for today's agreement, an agreement that proves that the relationship 
between NATO and Russia is not a zero-sum game and that the 21st century 
does not have to be trapped in the same assessments of advantage and 
loss that brought death and destruction and heartbreak to so many for so 
long in the 20th century.
    It is possible to enlarge NATO, to maintain its effectiveness as the 
most successful defense alliance in history, to strengthen our 
partnership with Russia, and to do all this in a way that advances our 
common objectives of freedom and human rights and peace and prosperity. 
We can build a better Europe without lines or gray zones but with real 
security, real peace, and real hope for all its citizens. A more secure, 
peaceful, and hopeful Europe clearly means a better world for Americans 
in the 21st century.
    Thank you.

Russian Cooperation and NATO Expansion

    Q. Mr. President, what do you think finally brought the Russians 
around, if there was one deciding factor? And how much of a problem is 
it going to be, now that you've got the Russians sort of on board, to 
convince Congress that NATO should, in fact, be expanded?
    The President. Well, let me answer the first question. I think what 
brought the Russians to this agreement was a sustained effort at dialog 
between Russia and NATO and between Russia and the United States and 
other friends of democratic Russia, making it clear that NATO has a new 
mission, that there was no attempt to be more threatening to Russia but 
instead to build a common partnership for democratic values and 
democratic interests.

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    Yesterday, President Havel of the Czech Republic had a very 
compelling article in one of our major newspapers, laying out that case. 
We are not going to define NATO in the 21st century in the same way we 
did in the 20th century. And we are trying to change the realities that 
caused so much grief in the last century. I think he understood that--
that in other words, that a democratic, free, nonaggressive--that is, in 
a destructive sense--nonaggressive Russia is not threatened by an 
expanded NATO, particularly now that there's going to be a partnership 
to work in areas which are in our common interests to work. So that's 
the first thing.
    The second thing I would say is, in terms of the Congress, now that 
the partnership has been solidified between NATO and Russia, which I 
think is an important thing on its own merits, it would seem to me to be 
a great mistake to deny countries that are clearly able and willing and 
anxious to take on the responsibilities of NATO membership, the 
opportunity to do that. The understandings that we have reached among 
ourselves about the process of expansion mean that the members 
themselves are ready to expand. And I believe that in the end Congress 
will support that, particularly since all of our NATO allies will be 
voting on to whom new membership will be offered.

Russian Domestic Acceptance

    Q. How tough a sell does President Yeltsin have at home with this?
    The President. Well, I would hope that the clarifications that were 
hammered out, first at Helsinki but then the excellent work that 
Secretary General Solana did, will help President Yeltsin to demonstrate 
that he has secured an agreement which shows that, while they don't have 
a veto over NATO actions, that NATO has no plans, no intentions, and has 
made clear that its mission is not to threaten, confine, or in any way 
undermine Russia; that we're looking for a partnership here between a 
democratic Russia and the democracies that are in NATO; and that this, 
in fact, will strengthen Russia's security and reduce the sense of 
anxiety that it might have otherwise felt, I believe. And I believe 
he'll be in a position to argue that to the Russia people now in a 
forceful way.
    But keep in mind, all of us are trying to change the--not only the 
facts on the ground, if you will, but the whole pattern of thought which 
has dominated the international politics of Europe for 50 years. And 
even though the cold war is over, a lot of people want to go back to the 
kind of--kind of an analysis that was more typical even before World War 
II, in the late 19th and early 20th century.
    And we're trying to change all that. We're trying to prove that 
democracies can reach across territorial lines to form partnerships that 
commit themselves not only to preserve freedom within each other's 
borders and the integrity of those borders but to face these new 
transnational threats like terrorism, ethnic convulsions, and weapons 
proliferation.

Military Installations in New Member States

    Q. Mr. President, President Yeltsin said that you have made a 
precise commitment in this document to guarantee that there will be no 
military installations in the new member states. Have you given those 
guarantees?
    The President. I would urge you, first of all, to look at the 
language that Secretary General Solana has agreed to and that our 
representatives have provisionally agreed to just in the last couple of 
hours. What the language does is to make it clear that there are no 
plans and there are no reasons to, in effect, activate old Warsaw Pact 
military installations for what you might call traditional NATO 
aggressive forward-posturing but that we will have to use--there is an 
explicit understanding in the agreement that we will have to use some 
infrastructure for the agreed-upon operations that are an integral part 
of being a NATO member.
    So all we're doing in the understanding is to recognize, yes, there 
will be some use of military infrastructure so that the requirements of 
membership can be met by any new members, but, no, we are not moving the 
dividing line of Europe from its old dividing line between NATO and the 
Warsaw Pact further east. So I think we got just exactly the right kind 
of understanding. And again, I think Secretary General Solana did it 
right.
    Thank you.

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Note: The President spoke at 2:29 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to NATO Secretary General Javier 
Solana and Foreign Minister Yevgeniy Primakov of Russia. The agreement 
was formally titled the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation, 
and Security and NATO and the Russian Federation.