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Deutsche Presse-Agentur January 12, 2010 Eastern Europe wants NATO security reassurance -Albright said that the 60-year-old alliance needed to make 'a renewal of vow' so 'a centrality of the Article 5' is not questioned. -Seven members of Albright's expert group attended the Prague seminar, organizers said. The experts are next set to debate the NATO's strategic update in Oslo on Thursday. Prague: Eastern European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization want the alliance to provide them with a security reassurance at a time when the organization seeks ways to reinvent relations with Russia, officials said Tuesday. Ex-Soviet satellites that joined NATO in the years after Communism fell in Europe in 1989 want the alliance to make a renewed commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty's Article 5 in its new Strategic Concept, a NATO document that outlines key security goals. The Article 5 of the organization's 1949 founding treaty obliges members to defend each other if under attack. 'There is no question that an important concept is a reassurance that Article 5 is essential to the NATO alliance, and at the same time it is also very important to reset our relations with Russia,' said the former US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, who heads an expert group involved in drafting the document. Albright was in Prague on Tuesday for a conference pondering how the updated strategic blueprint should address the concerns of NATO's ex-Communist member states that fear a newly assertive Russia. 'It is critical for us that the level of security is the same for all members,' Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kohout told a joint press conference. 'Meaning that Article 5 ... is somehow re-confirmed.' Albright said that the 60-year-old alliance needed to make 'a renewal of vow' so 'a centrality of the Article 5' is not questioned. However, she added, such a reassurance 'goes along' with NATO's plan to 'reset' ties with Russia, which is no longer seen as an enemy. 'We are looking at a variety of structures,' Albright said, without providing details of the planned 'reset'. The alliance, which updates its strategic blueprint every 10 years, last reworked the document in 1999. A 12-member expert group chaired by Albright is to make recommendations for the NATO's secretary general, Andres Fogh Rasmussen, who is due to present the final draft at a NATO summit expected to take place in Lisbon in late 2010. Seven members of Albright's expert group attended the Prague seminar, organizers said. The experts are next set to debate the NATO's strategic update in Oslo on Thursday. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato Blog site: http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/ To subscribe, send an e-mail to: [email protected] or [email protected] Daily digest option available. ============================== --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST --^---------------------------------------------------------------- This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bNM5nn.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [email protected] For Topica's complete suite of email marketing solutions visit: http://www.topica.com/?p=TEXFOOTER --^----------------------------------------------------------------
