Tirana, May 08, SPA -- NATO's secretary-general said today that the alliance's door would be open to nations from the Balkans, whose 1990s wars changed NATO into a peacekeeper, provided they keep reforming and cooperating, according to Reuters. Addressing a meeting of the Adriatic Five charter of newNATO members Croatia and Albania as well as hopefuls Macedonia,Bosnia and Montenegro, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said NATO and EUmembership would help southeast Europe move forward. Inviting Bosnia and Montenegro last year into the AdriaticCharter Cooperation "was a further demonstration that the logicof working together has become firmly ingrained in this region",Scheffer said. "Cooperation has replaced confrontation, and this has openedup exciting new opportunities for all of southeast Europe," hetold the five Balkan states' foreign ministers in Tirana. "I have long been convinced that Euro-Atlantic integrationoffers the only feasible way for southeast Europe to moveforward." Hailing Croatia and Albania's entry into NATO early inApril, Scheffer said it was also a success for the whole regionand should serve as an example of what could be achieved. Macedonia failed to be admitted as a NATO member because of18-year-old objections from Greece over its name, the same asGreece's northernmost province, also the birthplace of ancientGreek hero Alexander the Great. "We are fully aware that not all countries here in thisregion have yet been able to realise that ambition. But thelogic of integration through NATO enlargement remains as validas ever," he added. "That is why NATO's door will remain open. It is whycountries that aspire to NATO membership must maintain, andindeed intensify, their reform efforts," he added. NATO intervened first in Bosnia and Herzegovina and later inKosovo to stop armed conflicts that ravaged the Balkans foralmost a decade as former Yugoslavia disintegrated. Scheffer said that, in many respects, NATO's transformationafter the end of the Cold War originated in southeast Europe, aeuphemistic term for the Balkans. "It was Yugoslavia's collapse that forced NATO to assume arole it had never before contemplated -- that of crisis managerand peacekeeper," Scheffer said. "With the resolution of that crisis, and the establishmentof peace throughout this region, NATO's commitment has notlessened, and should not." NATO troops are still stationed in Bosnia and Kosovo tomaintain a fragile peace between the various communities there. Balkan countries are in various stages of their NATO and EUmembership, with Croatia now the closest to joining the EU.--SPA www.spa.gov.sa/662198