IN A bid to reassure Russia over the eastward expansion of NATO, European leaders have agreed to relaunch talks next year on the reduction of conventional forces in Europe (CFE) treaty.
The move at the summit of the Organisation for Security and Co operation in Europe (OSCE) helped to take the heat out of a dispute between the Russians and the US over the speed of NATO enlargement.
"This is a major achievement which by itself will justify the summit," the Portuguese Prime Minister, Mr Antonio Guterres, said. Portugal is hosting the meeting of the 54 member organisation.
The Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, speaking on behalf of the European Union, also welcomed the summit's commitment to work on strengthening European security by developing the idea of the new "Europe Security Model" in the form of the EU's "platform for security co operation" - essentially a forum where each of the continent's national government's and regional security organisations can work together in a mutually reinforcing way.
The concept is seen as an alternative to Russian proposals for a more hierarchical, legally binding security structure with the OSCE at the top and the roles of NATO and WEU relegated.
Mr Bruton also called for the reinforcement of the preventive diplomacy and crisis management capacities of the OSCE as a regional forum recognised by the UN. The EU, he said, also wanted to see the organisation's human rights, national minorities, and media freedom role enhanced.
At a bilateral EU Bulgaria meeting on the fringes of the summit, the Minister of State for European Affairs, Mr Gay Mitchell, heard an impassioned appeal from Sofia's acting Foreign Minister, Ms Irina Bukova, for 300,000 tonnes of cereal food aid from the EU. Ms Bukova is understood to have warned that famine was now a reality.
Mr Mitchell promised that this week's meeting of EU foreign ministers would look sympathetically at the proposal.
But the meeting has been dominated by Russian fears on NATO expansion and its parallel concern that the CFE treaty agreed in 1990 between NATO and the Warsaw Pact makes no allowance for the end of the latter and the consequent depletion of troop quotas on the Russian side.
Now an agreement is emerging that a review of the treaty will allay what are accepted as genuine Russian grievances, particularly on its north western and southwestern flanks, and that NATO can provide reassurance that it does not want to place large troop contingents on the soil of new members.
A summit declaration will pledge that the CFE revision "process should not result in any adverse effect on the legitimate security interests of any CFE state, party or other OSCE participating state".
Speaking in the debate the Russian Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, acknowledged: "Yes, Russia has no veto on the alliance's expansion. But nobody has a veto on our right to defend our national interests."
"We have declared clearly, and declare clearly now, our firm opposition to the North Atlantic Alliance's plans to move itself and its military infrastructure towards our territory," he said.
"Is it not clear that the appearance of new dividing lines would lead to a worsening of the whole geopolitical situation in the world?"
But the US Vice President, Mr Al Gore, was unapologetic. "NATO has been, and remains, a defensive alliance of like minded democratic states," he told the summit. As such, of course, it poses no threat to any other state."
Ministers repeatedly criticised violation of human rights in both Serbia - an expelled member - and Belarus. Today Mr Bruton leads an EU troika delegation to meet the Belarus leader, Mr Alexander Lukashenko, which will ask him to think again on new constitutional powers he has recently given himself.
On the fringes of the conference, France's President Chirac met the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, urging him to make a gesture to end the stalemate in the Middle East peace process.
. The commander of Russia's land forces, sacked by President Boris Yeltsin for "actions incompatible with his post", said yesterday he was stunned by the news and denied any wrongdoing. Mr Yeltsin signed an order sacking Gen Vladimir Semyonov on Saturday, the Defence Ministry said.
