Welcome Address

Fabrizio W. Luciolli

Secretary General of the Italian Atlantic Committee

Rome, Center for High Defense Studies, 25th September 2006

 

It is a privilege to welcome to the Rome Atlantic Forum so many future decision makers, young academicians, and researchers from nearly fifty countries. Your participation makes the Rome Forum a unique initiative, able to bring together Tomorrows' Leaders of the NATO, Partnership for Peace, and Mediterranean Dialogue countries, which are called to formulate proposals and a common vision regarding the Future of Euro-Atlantic Security.
I am most grateful to Admiral Luciano Callini for hosting this Forum at the Italian Center for High Defense Studies and for the extraordinary support offered to this Atlantic initiative. I am sure that all of you will benefit from the special inspiration originated by this prestigious Center of security studies, located within the Renaissance architecture of the Salviati Palace.
 
As the Rome Forum is neither a seminar nor a conference, its success is based on the analyses, discussions and reports resulting from the several sessions and Working Groups scheduled in the program. The final reports of your proceedings will be circulated in Riga on occasion of the NATO Summit, as well as among the proper national institutions in our respective countries.
 
The Riga Summit is called upon to define the future path of the Alliance in this new security environment. An Alliance that we must keep effective to protect, in the present challenging security scenario, the traditional core values of our societies: freedom of our democracies; respect for human rights and differences. The latter representing - as in this Forum - an added value for our societies and not a dividing factor.
 
Although the Rome Atlantic Forum is fully projected toward the future, its aim recalls the far-sighted words of the NATO Report on Non-Military Cooperation, authored fifty years ago by the Committee of Three composed of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Gaetano Martino and his Canadian and Norwegian colleagues Lester B. Pearson and Halvard Lange. The Report stated that "A sense of community must bind the people as well as the institutions of the Atlantic nations... it is important, therefore, for the NATO countries to promote cultural cooperation among their peoples by all practical means in order to strengthen their unity and develop maximum support for the Alliance. It is particularly important that this cultural cooperation should be wider than continental. The Committee welcomes the measures for cultural cooperation within the Atlantic Community which have been initiated by private individuals and non-governmental groups. These should be encouraged and increased."
 
In keeping with this tradition, the Rome Atlantic Forum is paving today the way for the future of our Alliance by taking advantage of your interactive participation.
On the other hand, this Forum wishes to emphasize our sense of community and solidarity. In fact, the Rome Atlantic Forum is intended to establish a new network and a growing web of relationships, where our common values – and, hopefully, the venue of Rome - will be the central point.
These are the elements represented in the logo created for the Rome Atlantic Forum that places the NATO symbol at the center of Michelangelo's design for the Capitol Square of Rome.
And it is in the spirit of the cultural cooperation envisaged by the Committee of Three that the Italian Atlantic Committee promoted this Forum and to which I welcome you all.

 

 
 
 

52 ATA General Assembly

Athens, December 5-10. NATO's Challenges in 21st Century.  >>

Riga Summit

November 28 - 29. Think Tank representatives, Researchers and Young Political Leaders, will meet in Riga in parallel meetings and educational programs that will be addressed by the NATO Heads of State and Government.  >>

Atlantic Council of Albania

Tirana, November 18. Educational Seminar on Euro-Atlantic Values and the Cooperation for Security.

International Seminar in Milan

October 19 - 21. A three days Seminar, organized by the Catholic University and promoted by the Italian Atlantic Committee, brought together researchers, students and academicians, that analyzed NATO and the New Challenges to the Military Force and Diplomacy.