U.S. President Bill Clinton greets NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana on Friday at ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of NATO's founding  ALSO  IN-DEPTH SPECIAL: NATO at 50

April 23, 1999
Web posted at: 2:13 p.m. EDT (1813 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- NATO, an alliance created to deter war in Europe, marked its 50th anniversary Friday while waging war in the Balkans.

As the leaders of NATO's 19 member countries gathered in the U.S. capital, the conflict in Kosovo dominated their discussions and muted their celebrations. The ceremony marking the anniversary took place in the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, where the 12 original members signed the treaty creating the alliance on April 4, 1949.

Meanwhile, NATO pilots and cruise missiles continued to strike at Yugoslavia on Friday, their targets increasingly focused on the political infrastructure behind President Slobodan Milosevic.

"The founding fathers of this alliance would be proud of what we have done and what we are doing," NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said Friday. "Fifty years after its creation, the Atlantic alliance continues to demonstrate that for us, values have meaning."

U.S. President Bill Clinton cast the allies' conflict with Yugoslavia in terms of its future relevance, declaring, "The alliance will not have meaning in the 21st century if it permits the slaughter of innocents on its doorstep."

NATO accuses Yugoslavia's leaders of conducting a campaign against ethnic Albanian civilians in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic. Yugoslav resistance to a peace agreement for the province led NATO to begin its air war on March 24.

Paraphrasing early 20th-century U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt -- whose name is borne by a U.S. aircraft carrier participating in the Balkan campaign -- Clinton said the alliance had no choice but to play a role in Europe.

"The only question is whether we will play it well or ill," he said.