President Clinton has called for Russia to be allowed to join the European Union and NATO as the final step in uniting Europe in peace and prosperity. Speaking in the southern German city of Aachen, where he received the International Charlemagne Prize for his contribution to European unity, Mr Clinton said the West must look beyond the immediate challenges facing Russia and doubts about Moscow's commitment to democracy.
"Because the stakes are so high, we must do everything we can to encourage a Russia that is fully democratic and united in its diversity - a Russia that defines its greatness not by dominance of its neighbours, but by the dominant achievements of its people and its partnership - a Russia that should be, indeed must be, fully part of Europe. "That means no doors can be sealed shut to Russia. The alternative would be a future of harmful competition between Russia and the West and the end of our vision of an undivided continent," he said.
The President will leave Germany today for Moscow, where he will meet President Vladimir Putin and his remarks at Aachen were clearly aimed at reassuring the Russian leader that the West does not represent a threat. But in a speech honouring the US President, the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, made clear Europe's concern that Washington's plan for a national missile defence system (NMD) could provoke a new arms race.
Acknowledging that the US had the sovereign right to enhance its national defence, Mr Schroder said the NMD should be discussed in a spirit of partnership.
"Our primary goal must remain the long-term maintenance of our common security and to choose carefully the most appropriate means," he said.
The Chancellor thanked Mr Clinton for his personal commitment to maintaining a US presence in Europe after the end of the Cold War and said that the President's actions had made him a European.
"It was his own personal achievement that after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the United States did not lose interest in Europe, but in his own words `set out to do for the eastern half of Europe what we helped to do for the western half after the second World War'," Mr Schroder said.
But Mr Clinton warned against taking self-congratulation too far and said that the task of uniting Europe still had a long way to go. Among the challenges facing Europe was the integration of Turkey and the fractured states of south-east Europe.
"That is the only way to make peace last in that bitterly divided region. Our goal must be to debalkanise the Balkans," he said.
The International Charlemagne Prize has been awarded by the city of Aachen since 1950 to recognise statesmen who have contributed significantly to European unity. Mr Clinton flew to Berlin after the award ceremony for a meeting of centre-left leaders from around the world and was due to have a private dinner last night with the disgraced former chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl.
He will take part this morning in a conference on government in the 21st century, aimed at developing responses to globalisation that do not fall into traditional categories of left and right.
Mr Clinton and Mr Schroder surprised Berliners on Thursday night by spurning the capital's most fashionable haunts in favour of an Alsatian restaurant in Prenzlauer Berg, a formerly bohemian district in the east of the city.
