Summit of the Euro- Atlantic Partnership Council Madrid 9 July 1997

Remarks of H.E. Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary General, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Madrid Meeting is a high and difficult summit of modern times which incurred many risks for the climbers. Yet, the climb has occurred and we have every reason to congratulate the participants. From the peak of Madrid, much is seen in a new light. One such thing is the road the world ought to have taken after the end of the Cold War. The road of unity of the democratic forces that would have enabled them to jointly create a world-wide system of security, based on the commonality of values and a single world view. The road that would have helped surmount irrational confrontations and ideological chimeras. The world, however, has found itself on another road, the one that passed through the remnant icefloes of the Cold War, that could have hemmed it in, icebound, or turned it towards the past confrontation. A Cold Peace after the Cold War, as the President of Russia put it, was a very real alternative. From the peak of Madrid, it is clearly discernable why. One of the central problems of our time is that too many people continue to live in the past. Too many remain enslaved by history and perceptions formed thereby. The war of ideologies has been replaced by a war of perceptions. NATO has changed, but in some countries it is still used as a boogie man to threaten the children. Russia has changed, but many of those who support the enlargement of the Alliance, tend to see her in the light of old perceptions. We are perpetually boxing with a shadow - the shadow of the past - often taking the blows meant for that very past. To this day, the last scholastics of the retiring century bitterly debate as to where and when the Cold War ended - on that stormy day in Malta, in the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, or in the hour of signing the Charter for a New Europe? As for me, I am inclined to think that the Cold War refuses to relinquish its strongholds and we must conquer them day-by-day and step-by-step, expanding the space for new achievements. Among these are the creation of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, the signing of the Agreement between NATO and Russia, as well as the inclusion of this great nation in the Group of Eight and the Charter signed between NATO and Ukraine. Together they provide compelling evidence of the viability of the new political thinking whose origin in Moscow of the mid-80s, marked the end of the Cold War. As for the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, I wish it would not in the future remain merely a body for political consultations but, rather, evolve into an effective instrument for solving problems, still abundant on the territories of the Partner States. It would help to use the experience accumulated by the member states of the Alliance and also provide an additional stimulus to regional co-operation. Allow me now, however, to close on a different note. While in many countries the integrity of life remains violated, we cannot celebrate the victory. Only joint efforts, as was demonstrated by the operations in Bosnia, are capable of restoring peace. I think the time has also come for a collective effort to be made towards the restoration of peace and justice which were crushed during the conflict in Abkhazia. Only effective measures promoting security in Europe and its proximity will allow us to say, "it matters not in which direction NATO expands as long as it expands toward peace."