Word: warsaw
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...glance, adding former Warsaw Pact allies of the Soviet Union to the ranks of the triumphant NATO alliance seems a good idea. After all, the argument went, these were the captive nations, now freed, and they deserve the advantages of membership, including the guarantee that an attack on any member will be considered an attack on all of them...
...Senators ask, should the new democracies be forced to spend more money for tanks and fighters when they should be improving their roads and water supplies? Most of all, they want to know how much it will cost to bring former Warsaw Pact armies up to NATO standards and whether the European members, present and future, can be counted on to pay their share. "What are we getting ourselves into in terms of costs?" asks Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin...
...signing was not entirely playacting. The fact is that Russia can consult with a growing NATO, but Russia is left out. So are several other countries in Eastern and Central Europe, including the Baltics, that desperately want to get in. NATO members themselves have begun squabbling about which former Warsaw Pact countries will be invited to join and who will pay the costs; the estimate, still only hazy, and probably too low, is about $35 billion over 10 years...
...economy is strong enough to qualify, Prime Minister Tony Blair says he probably won't go in on the first round. For the other states, the problem is the criteria for entry. To begin with, only members of the European Union may join, so that excludes all the former Warsaw Pact states. Then the applicants face strict requirements set by the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. At the top of the list is the demand that a country's budget deficit must not be higher than 3% of its gross domestic product. That is a tough one, and most European governments...
...fitting, even if only a coincidence, that the new millennium arrives along with a series of momentous European decisions and deadlines. Next month in Madrid a NATO summit meeting will invite at least three former Warsaw Pact members to join the Western alliance in 1999. Next spring the European Union will begin organizing the monetary union for its start in 1999 and open talks with Central and Eastern European countries that want to join...