Russia And NATO: Going Steady

NATO, an alliance set up more than a half century ago for the Cold War containment of Moscow, has formally welcomed its old enemy as a junior partner.

President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin joined 18 NATO leaders at a seaside military base in Rome on Tuesday for a ceremony establishing a NATO-Russia Council giving Russia a say on many NATO decisions.

"Two former foes are now joined as partners, overcoming 50 years of division and a decade of uncertainty," President Bush said as Russia prepared to take its place at the NATO table with its 19 other members.

"The significance of this meeting is difficult to overestimate," said Putin, noting that such a role for Russia would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. "We have come a long way from confrontation to dialogue, and from confrontation to cooperation."

"Being realists, we must remember that relations between Russia and the North Atlantic alliance have been historically far from straightforward," said the Russian president.

Putin noted that Russia is not being admitted as a full partner and has a limited role. "We must understand this Rome Declaration ... is only a beginning," he said.

NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson, who will be chairman of the new council, opened the session, declaring "this gathering represents the hope of a better, saner future."

Robertson said he considers the council a real breakthrough and expressed hope that it would "not just deliberate but take decisive actions. ...There is a common enemy out there."

Tuesday's formal establishment of a NATO-Russia Council comes as NATO looks forward to expanding further in November and as it ponders its role in an age when Russia is no longer an adversary but a friend.

CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller reports President Bush is all for the new NATO deal with Russia, which will give Russia more authority than it had in an earlier, less formal, arrangement set up several years ago to try to nudge Moscow closer to the West.

"For decades, Russia and Nato were adversaries," said Mr. Bush. "Those days are gone - and that's good."

Russia's NATO involvement will be limited to certain areas.

They include crisis management, peacekeeping and such military areas as air defense, search-and-rescue operations and joint exercises.

Under the new arrangement, NATO and Russia will decide only on those issues on which they can find consensus. More contentious issues will be left off their agenda, and NATO will keep a free hand in setting and implementing policy.

For Putin and President Bush, the NATO meeting is their second get-together in a week. President Bush spent three days in Russia last week as part of a four-nation European tour, visiting both Moscow and St. Petersburg. In Moscow last week, the two leaders agreed to slash their strategic nuclear arsenals to one-third of the present levels over the next decade.

For President Bush, Rome - the site of the NATO meeting - is the third and final stop on a weeklong European trip with a schedule that has been, at times, grueling.

Mr. Bush began the day Tuesday with a visit with Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Mr. Bush, who has been looking tired in recent days, was asked whether he had gotten over his jet leg. "Who's got jet lag?" he replied.

On Monday, President Bush marked the Memorial Day holiday with a tour of Normandy, site of the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion that ultimately liberated France and turned the tide of World War II.

"Our security is still bound up together in a trans-Atlantic alliance, with soldiers in many uniforms defending the world from terrorists at this very hour," President Bush said at the Normandy American Cemetery.

The United States counts Russia as a key ally in the present anti-terrorism war - just as it was a key ally in World War II. The intervening Cold War repeatedly has been pronounced ended.

In advance of Tuesday's ceremony, NATO opened a military mission in Moscow on Monday.

"This will allow ... NATO and Russia, to discuss ... and take decisions on things to be done in collaboration in fields of security and military interests," said Italian Admiral Guido Venturioni, head of NATO's military committee.

Putin put a different spin on the new arrangement, portraying it as "an extra contribution by Russia to international security."

The new council is to replace a consultative body set up in May 1997 to ease Moscow's alarm over NATO's plans to include some of Russia's Soviet-era allies and neighbors.

The rupture over the NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia undermined the earlier effort.

NATO will meet in November in Prague and likely expand by six or seven Eastern European nations, some of which border Russia.

The last time NATO expanded was in 1999, when Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republican joined. That expansion was approved only after long, contentious debate in the U.S. Senate and elsewhere.

This time, little opposition has surfaced to opening NATO's doors wider. Even Putin appears resigned to what the Bush administration is calling a "robust enlargement."

Some European allies have expressed concern that the Bush administration sees NATO as increasingly irrelevant. U.S. commanders were frustrated in having to coordinate every step with NATO partners in the 1999 Kosovo war. In the Afghanistan campaign, NATO essentially sat on the sidelines.

Bush administration officials would like to see NATO improve its military capacity - becoming more mobile and more effective - as it enlarges to complete the reunification of Europe.

After Tuesday's NATO summit, President Bush will go to the Vatican for a meeting with Pope John Paul II before heading home to Washington.