News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: NATO, The Former Soviets & POWs

Date: May 15, 2001

"From the Coalition of Families:

Recipients are being blind copied.

This is being sent around as a 'heads up' on an important issue that will be here and gone before we know it. As you all might recall, not long ago, former Soviet bloc countries Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic wanted to join NATO. Those of us in the POW/MIA community thought it would be fitting that, as a condition of entry into a military alliance with this country, these former Soviet sister countries provide meaningful cooperation with American efforts to learn the truth about Soviet practices of taking American servicemen.

Not surprisingly, the Clinton Administration made no such demands. So the Community went to Congress and asked that the Senate add some language about cooperation with the accounting effort before it ratified the treaties. In a wonderful show of support, the Senate voted 92-0 to amend the treaties to require Presidential certification that the three countries were fully cooperating in certain enumerated ways. Well, Clinton just went ahead and made (rubber stamped) the certification...even though the U.S. side of the US/Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs was reporting a lackluster effort by these three countries. The opportunity was lost and, predictably, cooperation by these 3 countries has all but dried up, with no real substantive results in the meantime.

Well, the issue has come around again. This time there are 9 former communist East European countries asking for admission to NATO: Albania; Bulgaria; Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania; Macedonia; Romania; Slovakia; and Slovenia. These countries have formally requested admission at NATO's next summit meeting, in Prague next year. US Senators Lott and Helms have reportedly already made supportive remarks, and President Bush is quoted as saying that 'No country would be left out on grounds of its history or place on the map'.

It is fine to enlarge NATO, and to admit former Soviet controlled countries. It is not fine to bestow the benefit of NATO membership on countries that were privy to information about the transfer of American servicemen to Soviet territory, who do not come forward with that information. We have learned already that governments do not volunteer information they don't have to. In the past, the US government has not acted on its own to require cooperation as a condition of its approval of a country's admission to NATO.

Undoubtedly, the POW/MIA community will, once again, have to take the initiative if we hope to take advantage of an opportunity before us. The Clinton Administration threw away a similar opportunity. Hopefully the Bush Administration will take a different tact. No doubt, we will have to step up and make the issue known and fight to have it addressed. The sooner the better, for done deals are hard to un-do.

The Coalition intends to raise the issue with various officials within both the Administration and Congress. We encourage others to do the same. "