ALSO NATO statement on Kosovo  IN-DEPTH SPECIAL: NATO at 50

April 23, 1999
Web posted at: 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT)

In this story: High stakes for NATO in Kosovo RELATED STORIES, SITES

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

As the leaders of NATO's 19 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.

After a three-hour meeting on the crisis in Kosovo, NATO released a statement highlighting its determination to continue military action against Yugoslavia until Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ends his offensive against ethnic Albanians.

"We will not allow this campaign of terror to succeed. NATO is determined to prevail," the statement said.

Meanwhile, NATO pilots and cruise missiles continued to strike at Yugoslavia on Friday, their targets increasingly focused on the political infrastructure of 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."

Solana addresses the 50th anniversary gathering

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 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.

A half-century ago, the alliance had a straightforward mission -- a collective European security alliance to contain the Soviet Union. Today, the Soviets are gone and Russians serve alongside NATO troops in the international force in Bosnia. But advocates say NATO still has to look out for its own.

"NATO'S fundamental purpose -- safeguarding the ideals, interests and territory of its members -- is unchanging," U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said.

But Kosovo is seen as a test for NATO as it tries to define its mission for the next century. It's a mission which began to evolve earlier this decade -- from defense of Western Europe to a more aggressive posture when NATO troops entered Bosnia.

The war in the Balkans is not the only threat the alliance faces: terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the spread of long- range ballistic missiles and computer-borne attacks are also concerns that NATO planners are watching. Russia, meanwhile, is struggling with a chronically weak economy and the national shock of losing its superpower status.

"If we treat Russia the way Western nations treated Germany after its defeat in World War I, we might end up with a future Russia that was like Hitler's Germany," Ashton Carter, a Harvard University professor and author of the book "Preventive Defense" told CNN.

But NATO leaders say the organization's credibility is particularly at stake in Kosovo -- and failure could mean its death as an effective force in world affairs.

"NATO has an obligation to be successful, quite frankly, and every head of state from the meeting I have come from has made that point," alliance spokesman Jamie Shea said Friday.

Correspondents Andrea Koppel and David Ensor contributed to this report.