Press Communiqué M-NAC-1(94)46 Issued at the Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council held in Istanbul, Turkey, 9 June 1994

Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council/ North Atlantic Cooperation Council, Istanbul, Turkey, 9-10 June 1994 Final Communiqué

At their Summit meeting in Brussels on 10-11 January, our Heads of State and Government confirmed the enduring validity and indispensability of the North Atlantic Alliance and their commitment to a strong transatlantic partnership between North America and a Europe developing a Common Foreign and Security Policy and taking on greater responsibility on defence matters. They also reaffirmed the Alliance's enduring core functions. They gave their full support to the development of a European Security and Defence Identity. To enable the Alliance better to meet new security challenges, they decided: to adapt further the Alliance's political and military structures to reflect both the full spectrum of its roles and the development of the emerging European Security and Defence Identity, and to endorse the concept of Combined Joined Task Forces; to reiterate their strong commitment to the transatlantic link, which is the bedrock of NATO; to reaffirm the openness of the Alliance to membership of other European countries; to launch the Partnership for Peace initiative; and to intensify the Alliance's efforts against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery.

We have reviewed today in Istanbul the implementation of these Summit decisions and resolved to press forward with it. We note with satisfaction the progress already achieved in the short time since the Summit. We have given guidance to the Council in Permanent Session on how to proceed further, and look forward to its reports to us at our next meeting in December. We are particularly pleased with the positive reception of the Partnership for Peace initiative by our Partners in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council and by other CSCE countries. Twenty countries have already joined with us in this endeavour to forge new security relationships with the Alliance, to expand political and military cooperation throughout Europe, and to increase stability and diminish threats to peace. The immediate response of Partner countries, and the care they have put into their preparations for this cooperation, demonstrate their commitment to working alongside the Alliance for the preservation of peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area. The process of implementation of the Partnership for Peace initiative is well underway. Some Partner countries' representatives have already moved into dedicated office facilities at NATO Headquarters. The first individual Partnership programme should be agreed shortly. The Partnership Coordination Cell at Mons has been inaugurated and will under the authority of the North Atlantic Council, carry out the military planning necessary to implement the Partnership Programmes. The work of the Coordination Cell will provide the basis for joint training and exercises. The first joint peacekeeping field exercises will take place this autumn in The Netherlands and in Poland, the latter being the Partnership's first major activity in a Partner country. A joint maritime exercise sponsored by SACLANT is also being planned for later this year. In addition, a number of nationally sponsored peacekeeping exercises with Partners will take place in 1994, also contributing to the goals of the Partnership. We have tasked the Council in Permanent Session to expedite work on a draft convention on the status of Partners' missions and representatives to NATO. We are grateful to Belgium for provisional arrangements under which Liaison Officers of Partner countries will be able to operate. We reiterate our conviction that stability and security in the Euro-Atlantic area can be achieved only through fulfilment in good faith of international obligations, cooperation and common endeavour. Partnership for Peace and our intensifying cooperation in the framework of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council are complementary in pursuing this goal. We want to develop a strong partnership with all Partner countries. We are pleased with the significantly expanded range of practical cooperative activities being conducted under the 1994 NACC Work Plan. Our Alliance's fundamental goal remains to contribute to lasting peace, stability and well-being in the whole of Europe. We are working for the intensification of transparent relations between NATO and its partners on an equal footing. These relations, while not replacing the network of interdependent and mutually reinforcing European and Euro-Atlantic institutions, help prevent new divisions in Europe and contribute to strengthening security. We therefore look forward to further deepening our dialogue and strengthening our relationship with each of our partners. This will not, of course, affect NATO's right to take its own decisions on its own responsibility by consensus of its members, including decisions on the enlargement of the Alliance as envisaged in the January 1994 Brussels Summit Declaration. We reaffirm our strong support for political and economic reform in Russia and recognize the important contributions to European stability and security that Russia can make on a wide range of issues. Accordingly, we wish to develop constructive relations of mutual respect, benefit and friendship between Russia and the Alliance, and we welcome the progress already made. We will pursue the further development of this relationship in a way that complements and reinforces our relationship with all the new democratic states to our east. The Partnership for Peace is an important new element in these relations, and we welcome Russia's declaration of its intention to join it at an early date by signing the Framework Document which sets out the principles guiding the participation of all Partners. We hope and expect that Russia will also join us in developing an extensive and far-reaching Individual Partnership Programme, corresponding to its size, importance, capabilities, and willingness to contribute to the pursuit of shared objectives. As with all Partners, our relationship with Russia, including in appropriate areas outside the Partnership for Peace, will be developed over time. Good cooperative relations between NATO and Russia will be the key element for security and stability in Europe. We are, therefore, interested in a broad dialogue with Russia in pursuit of common goals in areas where Russia has a unique or particularly important contribution to make. We believe that an independent, democratic, stable and nuclear weapons-free Ukraine would contribute to security and stability in Europe. We therefore welcome Ukraine's adherence to the Partnership for Peace and we look forward to further developing our relationship with Ukraine. We have taken note of the preliminary work undertaken on the further adaptation of the Alliance's structures and procedures, in particular on the development of the Combined Joint Task Forces concept, including an initial assessment by NATO's Military Authorities of the military aspects of the implementation of this concept. On the basis of today's discussion, further political guidance is being developed which will also take account of the views of the WEU. In this regard, we have taken note of the views expressed by WEU Ministers in the Kirchberg Declaration of 9 May 1994. We look forward to a further report by the Council in Permanent Session at our next meeting in December. We attach great importance to this work, which will enhance the Alliance's ability to respond to crises and provide separable but not separate military capabilities that could be employed by NATO or the WEU. The Summit decisions have set the course for cooperation, including the readiness of the Alliance to make its collective assets available, on the basis of consultations undertaken by the European Allies in pursuit of their Common Foreign and Security Policy. Following the decision at the Brussels Summit to intensify and expand NATO's political and defence efforts against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivery, we have today adopted and made public an overall policy framework setting out the basic principles of the Alliance's role in this field. We will continue to support and seek to reinforce ongoing efforts in other international fora and institutions to prevent proliferation. We will also give active consideration in the Alliance on how to reduce the proliferation threat or protect against it. We have tasked the Council in Permanent Session to report back to us at our December meeting. We have discussed a number of regional issues and sources of tension. The situation in Southern Caucasus continues to be of special concern. We condemn the use of force for territorial gains. Respect for the territorial integrity independence and sovereignty of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia is essential to the establishment of peace, stability and cooperation in the region. Peaceful and just solutions to ongoing conflicts in the region can only be reached through efforts under the aegis of the UN and the CSCE. We welcome the recent agreement to complete the withdrawal of foreign troops from Latvia by 31 August 1994. We expect the early conclusion of the on-going bilateral negotiations to achieve an agreement on the withdrawal of the foreign troops remaining in Estonia by the same date. We urge the parties to resolve the remaining issues. We will consult in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council tomorrow with our Cooperation Partners on all these issues and on possible ways to resolve them. We are deeply concerned that despite all efforts of the international community, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and, particular, in Bosnia and herzegovina continues. We welcome the contribution of the Contact Group and support the conclusions reached at the 13 May Geneva meeting of Foreign Ministers. We urge the parties concerned to: conclude an immediate and comprehensive cessation of hostilities and carry forward in parallel without preconditions serious efforts to reach a political settlement; include in the agreement on cessation of hostilities the separation of forces, the withdrawal of heavy weapons and the interposition of UNPROFOR troops; reach a negotiated compromise that provides the Bosniac-Coat Federation with viable, realistic and reasonable territory; and accept a settlement that preserves Bosnia and herzegovina as a single Union within its internationally recognised borders, while providing for constitutional arrangements that established the relationship between the Bosnia-Croat and Bosnian Serb entities as they were referred to in the Vienna and Washington agreements. We welcome as a positive first step the agreement reached in Geneva on 8 June not to engage in any kind for a period of one month starting from 10 June 1994 at 1200 hours local time. The Alliance reiterates its determination to carry out the necessary action under the authority of the UN Secretary Council and, where appropriate in close coordination with UNPROFOR, to enforce UN Security Council resolutions dealing with embargoes on the Former Yugoslavia, the No-Fly Zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina established in accordance with Security Council resolutions 824 and 836. We are united in our resolve to follow up the Alliance decisions of 9 February and 22 April which established military exclusion zones. We reaffirm our readiness to support the implementation of an agreed peace settlement in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We reaffirm the importance we attach to enhanced relations with other institutions. Over the past six months, the Alliance's relationship with the UN has developed greatly. The Alliance has demonstrated its readiness and its capacity to support on a case by case basis, peacekeeping and other operations under the authority of the UN Security Council. We will work for further improvement in the mutual understanding and the close cooperation between NATO and the UN. Close cooperation and coordination between NATO and WEU will continue to be developed in accordance with the principles of complementary and transparency. The Summit decisions have set the course for our cooperation, including the readiness of the Alliance to make its collective assets available, on the basis of consultations in the North Atlantic Council, for WEU operations undertaken by the European Allies in pursuit of their Common Foreign and Security Policy. We welcome the decisions taken in Luxembourg by the WEU Council to create a status of association with the Central European Consultation Partners of the WEU. This important decision complements the Alliance's efforts to promote security and stability through the North Atlantic Cooperation Council and the Partnership for Peace, and contributes to the growing network of security structures in Europe. We welcome the progress made in the preparation of the Pact on Stability in Europe, and more particularly the success of the Inaugural Conference held in Paris on 26-27 may. We will continue fully to support this initiative, which aims to promote good neighbourly relations in Central and Eastern Europe, including questions related to frontiers and minorities, as well as regional cooperation and the strengthening of democratic institutions. The CSCE remains central to European security. We will work with other CSCE states to ensure that the Budapest Review Conference and Budapest Summit of Heads of State and Government will achieve progress in all areas of the CSCE, particularly with regard to early warning and conflict prevention, and further strengthen its effectiveness. We will contribute to the means necessary for the CSCE to carry out agreed missions and operations in timely and substantive way, and call upon other CSCE participating states to do likewise. We welcome arrangements that allow NATO to participate in the work of the CSCE and the CSCE to participate in certain NATO activities, and, as decided at our meetings in Athens last spring and at the CSCE Council in Rome, look forward to further development of the interaction and cooperation between the two organisations. We noted with satisfaction the results thus so far in the CSCE's Forum for Security Cooperation. We look forward to further concrete results by the time of the CSCE Summit IN Budapest on the issues identified in the Programme for Immediate Action, particularly with regard to a code of conduct committing all CSCE states to common rules of politico-military behaviour, the harmonisation of the obligations in the existing international instruments on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, the development of the Vienna Document 1992 on confidence- building measures, the global exchange of military information and non-proliferation of weapons and mass destruction. This CSCE Summit will provide an opportunity to take stock and give an impetus to the security dialogue and the negotiations conducted in the framework of the CSCE. We expect the Summit to address the issues of regional arms control, in particular with regard to the former Yugoslavia. We remain committed to the full and timely implementation of and the compliance with existing arms control and disarmament agreements. We continue to attach particular importance to: the integrity of the CFE Treaty and full compliance with all its provisions; the indefinite and unconditional extension of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the work towards an enhanced verification regime; achieving a universal and verifiable Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty at Geneva Conference on Disarmament; the early coming into force of the Convention of Chemical Weapons; the early entry into force of the Treaty on Open Skies; the strengthening of the Biological Weapons Convention. We welcome the assistance to the states concerned in eliminating former Soviet weapons of mass destruction. We consult tomorrow with our Cooperation Partners in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council on these and other arms control and disarmament issues. We condemn all acts of international terrorism. They constitute flagrant violations of human dignity and rights and are a threat to the conduct of normal international relations. In accordance with our national legislation, we stress the need for the most effective cooperation possible to prevent and suppress this scourge. We carefully follow the political developments around the Mediterranean. We are concerned by the risks to stability in this area. We consider that not only the security of the Alliance, but also that of Europe in general is affected by security in the Mediterranean. We direct the Council in Permanent Session to continue to review the overall situation and to examine possible proposals by its members with a view to contributing to the strengthening of regional stability. We express our deep appreciation for the gracious hospitality extended to us by the Government of Turkey.