Cheney Lauds 3 Premiers For Efforts To Join NATO
"Vice President Dick Cheney spent the weekend in this picturesque Dalmatian port, his last stop on a visit to Eastern Europe and former Soviet bloc states.
He met with leaders of Macedonia and Albania, as well as Croatia, and, before leaving Sunday, said that their efforts to join the European Union and NATO would help invigorate both institutions.
Mr. Cheney's visit was a low-key finale to a strategically important trip, which first took him to Lithuania for a meeting with a number of Eastern European leaders, where he gave a speech criticizing Russia for restricting human rights and using its natural resources to put pressure on its neighbors. He later visited Kazakhstan, which the United States has been trying to develop as an source for oil.
Mr. Cheney told a group of prime ministers, ''It's very important -- both for NATO and the E.U. -- to take in new members, people who aspire to join the organization, help rejuvenate it.''
Albania, Croatia and Macedonia form the Adriatic Charter, an association encouraged by Colin L. Powell when he was secretary of state to aid their attempts to join NATO.
The visit was a reward for Croatia, which Mr. Cheney said had made substantial progress in recent years. It has shed its nationalist image and helped to bring its last remaining Croatian war crimes suspect, Gen. Ante Gotovina, to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Croatia is now regarded as the favorite among the former Yugoslav states to be accepted into the European Union and NATO.
But Croatia has resisted American pressure to sign an agreement that would shield American soldiers from prosecution at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which the Bush administration has not recognized. The United States has cut aid to many nations that have refused to sign immunity agreements, contending that it was acting to protect American soldiers from politically motivated prosecution. Croatia has lost $5.8 million in military aid as a result.
But now Croatian officials say they are trying to resolve the issue through a status of forces agreement, to prevent American personnel on Croatian territory from being transferred to the court.
On Saturday, Mr. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, toured the old city in Dubrovnik, though it rained and they were subjected to the heckling of a lone Canadian student.
Mr. Cheney's visit encouraged local officials to conclude that the Bush administration would stay involved in helping to resolve the problems remaining in the region from the inter-ethnic and political turmoil of the 1990's.
''The three of us agreed that alongside the E.U., the U.S. should also be present in solving those issues,'' Ivo Sanader, Croatia's prime minister, told reporters after the meeting on Sunday.
This is an important year for the region to try to settle issues festering from the war in Bosnia, which ended a decade ago. Negotiations on the future of Kosovo, the province of Serbia now controlled by the United Nations, are under way, and could lead to it becoming independent.
In two weeks Montenegro, which with Serbia makes up all that remains of the Yugoslav federation, will hold a referendum about whether it will sever its remaining ties with the government in Belgrade.
Mr. Cheney did not publicly address these issues, but his team sought reassurance from the Adriatic Charter nations that they would help to maintain the timetable, officials who took part in the discussions said.
Chiding Moscow Again
SHANNON, Ireland, May 7 (Reuters) -- Mr. Cheney took Russia to task again on Sunday.
Heading home from visits to Lithuania, Kazakhstan and Croatia, Mr. Cheney said he had heard repeated concerns about Russia's ''internal developments,'' as well as its use of energy resources to ''obtain leverage'' over its neighbors.
He insisted, however, that Russia had nothing to fear from NATO, which has expanded eastward since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The vice president's plane touched down briefly at Shannon's airport on its way back to Washington.
In response to concerns about the repercussions of his criticism, Mr. Cheney dismissed the notion that Russia would retaliate by hardening its position at the United Nations against an American-led effort for action against Iran over its nuclear ambitions."