LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Nato Enlargement: Czech President
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Russia's reaction to the new momentum behind NATO enlargement has not been as hostile as many expected. Indeed, just 24 hours after the Bush speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin warmly embraced the American president at a summit in Bled, Slovenia, strongly implying that he did not intend to let enlargement undermine the potential for U.S.-Russia cooperation. Later in the summer, Putin took a further step toward acknowledging the inevitability of enlargement by expressing the view that Russia might itself want to join NATO, as an alternative to his preferred option of seeing NATO disappear. Putin went even further in October 2001, as Russian-American cooperation on terrorism was moving forward, saying that if NATO were to continue "becoming more political than military" Russia might reconsider its opposition to enlargement. This was hardly an expression of Russian support for enlargement, but it was the strongest signal yet that Moscow wants to find a way to accommodate a development that it does not like but knows it cannot stop. At their November 2001 summit in Crawford, Texas, Putin did not press Bush on the issue.
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NATO was not well served by the Clinton administration's orchestration of the NATO enlargement debate. By sacrificing policy depth for public relations spin, President Bill Clinton missed an opportunity to build strong support within Congress and among the American public concerning the post-Cold War value of NATO. There are lessons... to be learned from the debate in order to assess long-term implications for NATO as it moves beyond its fiftieth anniversary.
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Rafael ESTRELLA, President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA) has welcomed NATO's reaffirmation of its commitment to NATO enlargement. Mr. Estrella said that the declaration that the North Atlantic Council 'hope and expect' to launch the next round of enlargement at the Prague summit, and Lord Robertson's statement that the "zero option" is off the table, "were extremely positive developments and a visible expression of the open door policy."
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