Bush Outlines Vision for Europe

June 15 -- As he laid out his vision for a "whole and free" Europe, President Bush today sought to reassure Russia that an expanded and strengthened European alliance would not be its enemy.

"Our goal is to erase the false lines that have divided Europe for too long," the president said in Warsaw, Poland — a nation that was once on the other side of the Iron Curtain but is now a member of NATO.

"All of Europe's new democracies, from the Baltic to the Black Sea and all that lie between, should have the same chance for security and freedom … as Europe's old democracies have," Bush said.

In a nearly half-hour speech laden with historical references, Bush repeated the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's call for "a new unity" on the continent and said the vision of what his father called "a Europe whole and free" was "no longer a dream."

"Let us tell all those who have struggled to build democracy and free markets … no one can take away your freedom or your country," the president said, drawing sustained applause from his audience at the Warsaw University Library.

Bush urged his counterparts across the Atlantic to support expansion of the 19-member NATO alliance and the strengthening of ties with Russia, telling European leaders, "My nation welcomes the consolidation of European unity and the security it brings."

The president has also pushed for the enlargement of the 15-nation European Union. As heads of state and government met at the organization's summit in Gotheburg, Sweden, some 25,000 protesters who have descended on the city demonstrated against the EU. Hundreds of rioters clashed with police today, leaving two of the protesters wounded from gunfire.

Bush to Putin: U.S. 'No Enemy' of Russia

On the eve of their first face-to-face meeting, Bush sought to assure Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia has nothing to fear from the enlargement of NATO, a military alliance originally formed in the 1950s to counter the Soviet bloc.