Opening Remarks

Good morning. On behalf of the Ministers, I would like to thank our Belgian hosts for a most enjoyable dinner last night.
Let me welcome you to this meeting of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, with a special welcome to those Ministers - and the Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic - who join us for the first time today.

I would also like to extend a warm welcome to our guest speaker, Mr. Carl Bildt, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General to the Balkans. Carl, it is good to see you here again.

Our meeting will cover two main topics today - the situation in and around Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the contribution of the Partnership for Peace to defence capabilities and crisis response operations.

There have been few policies as successful in the past six years as NATO's policy of co-operating with non-NATO Partners across the Euro-Atlantic area. NATO's relations with its Partners are stronger than ever.

Forty-six countries are now members of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, with Ireland and Croatia joining in the past year. I hope conditions will soon permit Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia to join our ranks as well.

We have had frequent consultations in the EAPC on issues of importance for all of us - including a series of meetings in the tense weeks of late September and early October when it was unclear what events unfolding in Yugoslavia would mean for security and stability in the wider Balkan region.

We are also co-ordinating closely on operational matters. For example, we make it a standard practice to consult all the KFOR and SFOR contributors - NATO and non-NATO alike - on important documents such as our operational plans and our six-month reviews, in order to maintain transparency and common commitment to our peacekeeping tasks.

This is only natural. Today, there are over 10,000 troops from some 16 non-NATO countries participating in the SFOR and KFOR operations in the Balkans.

But of course, the Partnership for Peace is about far more than peacekeeping operations. The heart of PfP continues to be cooperation among NATO and non-NATO countries on fundamental issues such as democratic, civilian control of the military, and the reform and restructuring of armed forces, which will be the subject of our informal discussions over lunch today.

We have a long meeting ahead, so could I please ask the press to leave so that we may begin. Thank you.