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NATO Conference Up In Smoke
By Martin Burcharth, Dagbladet Information
and
Caroline Bahnson, BASIC Research Associate
On March 2, 1999 seventeen Ministers of Defense, including
US Secretary of Defense William Cohen, were evacuated from
the Ronald Reagan Center due to a smoke alarm.
In the morning on March 2, a smoke alarm sent Ministers of
Defense, four-star generals, high-ranking officials, ambassadors
and attachés from sixteen European countries and the
US out on a sunny street in Washington. While the American
Secretary of Defense William Cohen sat comfortably in his
black limousine guarded by well-armed agents from the Secret
Service, the European ministers wandered around aimlessly,
completely unprotected by the American authorities. Neither
the police nor the Secret Service was called upon to protect
the European Ministers of Defense as they waited on the street
for about one and a half hours.
In the meantime, the police and fire departments roped off
the newly built Ronald Reagan Center, where the Danish government
had arranged a conference on the future of NATO. The first
sign of failure came 15 minutes after the evacuation, when
the limousine with Cohen, one of the main speakers at the
conference, sped away towards the Pentagon.
It was later determined that the alarm was activated by a
gas leak in a nearby street. The same thing had happened two
weeks earlier, where the police had to evacuate the building
in the same manner and people waited outside in the winter
cold for 3 or 4 hours.
The otherwise mild atmosphere on the street darkened when
the members of the delegations, who had flown to Washington
from 16 European countries solely for the purpose of participating
in the conference, realized that it might not take place.
The conference had actually started out rather promising.
Secretary Cohen had arrived "only" ten minutes late, and the
host, Danish Minister of Defense Hans Haekkerup, had delivered
his introductory remarks. Later in the morning Cohen was supposed
to have discussed the situation in Kosovo with his Italian
colleague Carlo Scognamiglio. Also scheduled was a speech
by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Security Advisor for President Jimmy
Carter. They never got that far. The Portuguese Secretary-General
of the Western European Union, under whose wings the NATO
conference was held, was interrupted in the middle of his
welcoming speech by a whining smoke alarm and white flashing
lights. For about 20 seconds the leaders of the world's greatest
military alliance were completely tongue-tied. Was the smoke
alarm intended to show the participants how well the US had
prepared for potential emergencies during the Washington NATO
summit scheduled for the end of April? As Professor Charles
Perry from the Institute of Foreign Policy Analysis asked
the ministers and their delegations to leave the building
just like visiting tourists, the answer became clear: this
was neither a drill nor a Hollywood movie script. No one paid
much attention to the high-level crowd of delegates and ministers,
leading at least a few to conclude that bringing their own
security to the NATO summit might not be a bad idea.
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