NATO: 60 years in photos

General Alexander Haig discusses the strength of the Warsaw Pact at a Defence Planning Committee meeting in 1976.

NATO opens its new headquarters in Brussels, Belgium 1967.

President Richard Nixon (centre) welcomes NATO ministers, in April 1969, back to the room in Washington where the NATO Treaty had been signed 20 years previously.

President John F Kennedy visits NATO Headquarters in Paris, France 1961.

NATO Secretary General Manfred Wörner walks across Moscow's Red Square as he prepares for talks with the Soviet leadership, 1990.

NATO Ambassadors and staff observe three minutes' silence on 14 September 2001, as a mark of respect for the victims of the attacks in the US three days earlier.

A peacekeeper from the NATO-led Stabilisation Force walks on the former front line in Sarajevo.

An ethnic Albanian woman feeds her baby as she and another 2,000 refugees flee Kosovo on March 30, 1999.

An Italian soldier of the NATO peacekeeping forces stands near Sarajevo's Lion cemetery.

The Bosnian conflict was also a media war, with communication channels becoming targets.

General Wesley Clark outlines NATO's Allied Force operation in Kosovo at a press briefing on April 13, 1999.

Afghanistan has lived through the tyranny of the Taliban - evidenced here by their destruction of Buddhas of Bamyan in 2001.

Elections have shown the Afghans steadily taking control of their own country.

Afghanistan's transformation from bullets to ballots will be tested again during elections in the country this year.

Opium fields in Afghanistan create a source of misery for people - either through addiction, or through funding insurgents.

As NATO reaches 60, it plans to continue trying to uphold Alliance values.