By
BOB DEANS
BUCHAREST,
Romania - President Bush welcomed a pair of former communist nations into
NATO yesterday with a call to arms, saying Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
poses a threat to the security of Europe that must be confronted.
In a possible prelude to war against Baghdad, Bush likened that threat to the Nazi and Stalinist horrors that cast a pall over half a century of this region's tortured history.
Addressing
about 40,000 Romanians in Revolution
Square, where a popular uprising toppled
dictator Nicolae Ceausescu 13 years ago,
Bush cited Romania's populist triumph over totalitarian rule as a lesson
in standing up to a tyrant.
"The people of Romania understand that aggressive dictators cannot be appeased or ignored, they must always be opposed," said Bush, invoking language he frequently uses to justify assertive action against Saddam.
"An aggressive dictator now rules in Iraq," said Bush.
"By his search for terrible weapons, by his ties to terror groups, by his development of prohibited ballistic missiles, the dictator of Iraq threatens the security of every free nation," said Bush, "including the free nations of Europe."
In a dramatic speech before a cheering crowd that stood for hours in the rain to hear Bush, the remarks wrapped up a five-day swing that also took him to the Czech Republic and Russia. Bush had started his day in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, another nation joining NATO.
Bush returned late yesterday to Washington.
There, he will turn to domestic matters- he's scheduled to sign landmark legislation at the White House tomorrow creating a new Department of Homeland Security - before heading for his Texas ranch on Wednesday for Thanksgiving.
This week's trip was built around a NATO summit on Thursday in Prague. There the leaders formally invited seven East European micropowers - Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - to join the alliance in two years.
At a time when he has formally asked dozens of nations to contribute to a coalition force for possible military strikes against Iraq, however, Bush used the journey to remind NATO members, old and new, of the obligations and benefits of the alliance.
Bush has secured United Nations and NATO support for an ultimatum that Saddam get rid of his chemical and biological weapons or face, in the words of both institutions, "serious consequences."
As he has done repeatedly in recent months, the president clearly defined those consequences as a military attack to disarm and dislodge Saddam.
"The Iraqi regime will completely disarm itself of weapons of mass murder or we, the United States, will lead a coalition of willing nations and disarm that regime in the name of peace," Bush said, in one of the few lines that drew silence from an otherwise enthusiastic Romanian crowd. "Every free nation has a responsibility to play its full and responsible role."
In speeches here and in Vilnius, Bush pledged that the United States would come to the defense of any NATO country that comes under threat.
"Should any danger threaten Romania, should any nation threaten Romania," Bush vowed, "the United States of America and NATO will be by your side."
At the same time, said Bush, NATO members have a duty to join in its tasks. He said that expressly includes his call for the alliance to take on global terror and leaders, like Saddam, who threaten to put weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the sort of groups that conducted the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
"The world has suffered enough from fanatics who seek to impose their will through fear and murder," said Bush.
Each of the new NATO members suffered from decades of repression, either as part of the former Soviet Union or as a reluctant member of the old Warsaw Pact, the totalitarian counterweight to the western democracies that forged the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949.
Time may have dimmed the memory of World War II and its hardships for the nations of western Europe, Bush suggested. But he said that across Eastern Europe, whose decade-old democracies are still struggling to take hold, few have forgotten the sacrifices their freedom has required.
"You have known cruel oppression and withstood it. You were held captive by an empire, and you outlived it," Bush told several thousand Lithuanians in a square at the center of Vilnius. "Because you have paid its cost, you know the value of human freedom."
As Bush spoke, a pair of senior Lithuanians, braving wintry cold in traditional dress, held a large banner with blood-red teardrops above the dates 1940-1991: the period during which Lithuania was occupied by Nazi, and later Soviet, forces.
Bush used the moment to again raise the threats posed by al-Qaida and similar terrorist groups.
"Like the Nazis and the communists," said Bush, "the terrorists seek to end lives and control all life."
And, after a two-month diplomatic tussle with NATO allies such as Germany and France over his Iraq policy, Bush welcomed what he called the "moral clarity" the incoming members bring to the alliance.
"You value freedom because you have lived without it," Bush told the Romanians. "You know the difference between good and evil because you have seen evil's face."
It is those sensibilities, Bush has stressed, that will be as valuable to NATO as the military capabilities it will gain from its seven new member countries, which have a combined population of some 46 million.
"The strength of NATO does not only depend on the might of armies, but on the character of men and women," Bush told the Lithuanians, who saw one-third of their population wiped out in the cross-currents of World War II. "We must be willing to stand in the face of evil, to have the courage to always face danger."
Among the huge crowd in Bucharest was Dutescu Delia, an electrical engineer who turned out in a cold rain to hear Bush, a symbol to her of U.S. support for Romania's rocky transition to democratic rule.
"It was a very great speech," she said, beaming as Bush headed away from the square in his bullet-proof limo. "He's a good man and he helped us."
Delia, 26, braved hours of rain and cold to hear Bush speak in historic Revolution Square. There, throngs of protesters stood down totalitarian leader Ceausescu in 1989, heralding the beginning of the end of Soviet control of the region.