Secretary General Solana, President Clinton, distinguished Heads of State, distinguished Heads of Government,

It is a great honour for me to be here to represent the Parliaments of Allied Nations at this solemn gathering. I use the term "solemn" because it invokes both aspects of this historic occasion: acknowledgement of the past achievements of our Alliance, but also recognition of the gravity of the circumstances in which we meet, namely the situation on the ground in Kosovo.

Gravity, in terms of the unspeakable suffering of countless Kosovars who have been driven from their homes, separated from their loved ones, slaughtered in their thousands by a man whose sole obsession appears to be to cling to power irrespective of the cost. Gravity also, because this crisis represents the first real test for NATO to confront the new security challenges, and of our willingness to uphold, through the use of force, the values that bind us together. These values mean that the Milosevic solution cannot stand. The process of expulsion must be reversed and the Kosovars returned to their rightful homes under effective international protection. There is no other course.

You who have taken responsibility for this operation know how vital public support is to its success. The decision to send forces abroad is never an easy one. Our ethical and humanitarian justification for action in Kosovo is clear, and the vast majority of our public accepts and supports it. The public is deeply concerned by the tragic consequences of the war, but its memory is often short and its attention span very brief. As parliamentarians and governments we share the responsibility for ensuring that public support for the Alliances commitment does not weaken, even if the challenges that we will meet tomorrow were to be even more testing than that of today.

As the collective voice of the legislators of the Alliance, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly ­ at the time the North Atlantic Assembly - worked throughout the long years of the Cold War to build and maintain the broad consensus essential to the success of Alliance policy. Today our determination to maintain that consensus has not weakened, and I can assure you that at this stage the vast majority of our parliamentarians approve NATO's decision to use force against of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Perhaps the action that you have undertaken, with our support, in Kosovo shows more clearly than any speeches the willingness of the Alliance to place itself at the service of security and stability for Europe as a whole. We in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly have long been convinced that the security of Europe is indivisible, and what we have done since 1991 demonstrates that this is more than a mere conviction. Thanks to our Rose-Roth programme, we have forged strong links with all the parliaments in Central and Eastern Europe that share our determination to build security for the continent on the basis of partnership and co-operation.

And here, let me pay particular tribute to the two members of the US Congress and former Presidents of this Assembly, Bill Roth and Charlie Rose, who had the foresight to recognise, and the determination to provide, the political and practical assistance that was needed by the new parliaments in those early years of transition. The resulting initiative has played an invaluable role in strengthening parliamentary democracy throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

The work of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly has thus moved beyond that of a supporting role; it has become an integral part of NATO’s own effort to gradually build Europe’s security on the basis of co-operation among democracies. Acknowledgement of this new role by the governments of the Alliance and the active encouragement and support by Secretary General Solana has been, of course, a development of great satisfaction to Assembly parliamentarians.

Our co-operation, I would like to stress, has not been limited to what I would call "easy partners", those who have clearly made membership of NATO a priority. It has also extended to difficult ones, including Russia and Ukraine. Our efforts, encouraged by the NATO-Russia Founding Act, to reach out to the Russian parliament, had resulted in the creation of a relationship based on genuine dialogue. The creation of a joint committee based on the common interest of parliamentary accountability had, until recent events in Kosovo, begun to show progress. We saw the evolution of a common willingness to overcome, through dialogue, deep-rooted differences of view. We will, in the coming months, do all we can to reinvigorate these relations and play our role in ensuring that Russia does not isolate itself, but remains a full partner in Europe’s co-operative management of its security.

The generation of those who created the Alliance and steered it through the difficult years of the Cold War is passing. Fresh efforts will be needed to educate and inform the post-war generation of the relevance and potential of NATO to securing the future stability of Europe. This is why we have decided to launch next year a young parliamentarians' initiative designed to generate and sustain this support. I hope we can count on your assistance on this project as, ultimately, the vigour of NATO in the coming years will depend on the conviction of the upcoming generations.

Today, that conviction and the belief in NATO's future depends first and foremost on our success in Kosovo. We must demonstrate that there is no place for Milosevic and his ideas in the Europe we are building, and we must do whatever is necessary, including the deployment of ground forces, to achieve this objective. For the sake of the innocent of today, and those of tomorrow we collectively, the governments and parliaments of the Alliance, must not fail.