History cum politics
On 17th
September,1949 NATO council had their first meeting.
NATO: North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO /ˈneɪtoʊ/; French: Organisation du Traité
de l'Atlantique Nord; OTAN), also called the North Atlantic
Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between several North American and
European states based on the North Atlantic Treaty that
was signed on 4 April 1949.
NATO constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its
member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external
party. Three NATO members (the United
States, France and
the United Kingdom) are permanent members of the United Nations
Security Council with the
power to veto and are officially nuclear-weapon
states. NATO Headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels, Belgium, while the headquarters of Allied Command Operations is
near Mons, Belgium.
NATO is an alliance that consists of 29 independent member
countries across North America and Europe. An additional 21 countries
participate in NATO's Partnership
for Peace program, with 15 other countries involved in
institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO
members constitutes over 70% of the
global total Members' defense spending is supposed to amount to at
least 2% of GDP.
NATO was little more than a political association until the Korean War galvanized the
organization's member states, and an integrated military structure was built up
under the direction of two US Supreme Commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with
nations of the Warsaw Pact,
that formed in 1955. Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the
European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over
the credibility of the NATO defense against a prospective Soviet invasion—doubts that led
to the development of the independent
French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of France from NATO's military structure
in 1966 for 30 years. After the fall
of the Berlin Wall in Germany in 1989, the organization became
involved in the breakup of
Yugoslavia, and conducted its first military interventions in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995 and
later Yugoslavia in 1999.
Politically, the organization sought better relations with former Warsaw Pact
countries, several of which joined the alliance in 1999 and 2004.
Article 5 of the
North Atlantic treaty, requiring member states to come to the aid of any
member state subject to an armed attack, was invoked for the first and only
time after the September 11
attacks, after which troops were deployed to Afghanistan under the
NATO-led ISAF. The organization has
operated a range of additional roles since then, including sending trainers to Iraq, assisting in counter-piracy operations and in 2011
enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973.
The less potent Article 4, which merely invokes consultation among NATO
members, has been invoked five times: by Turkey in
2003 over the Iraq War;
twice in 2012 by Turkey over the Syrian
Civil War, after the downing of
an unarmed Turkish F-4
reconnaissance jet, and after a mortar was fired at Turkey from Syria; in 2014 by Poland, following the Russian intervention in Crimea and
again by Turkey in 2015 after threats by Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant to its territorial integrity.
john alechenu and Tony
Okafor
The
National Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic has upheld the
governorship primary that produced Oseloka Obaze as the party’s candidate for
the Anambra election scheduled for November 18.
The
Head of the PDP Publicity Division, Chinwe Nnorom, disclosed this in a
statement issued on behalf of the Caretaker Appeal Panel, on Saturday in Abuja.
Nnorom
said the committee upheld Obaze’s candidacy having examined all the petitions
filed before it.
She
said appeals for the August 28 primary were heard on September 12, at the PDP
national secretariat, Abuja, by the panel chaired by its National Chairman,
Sen. Ahmed Makarfi.
“To
this end, the leadership enjoins all party members and supporters in Anambra,
especially the aspirants, to put the issue regarding the primary behind them.
“We
should work together as one indivisible family ahead of the November 18
governorship election,” he said.
The News
Agency of Nigeria had reported that some of the aspirants staged a protest
at the venue of the party’s primary in Anambra over the alleged unwillingness
of the party to listen to their complaints.
Some
of the aspirants were the Chairman of Capital Oil, Ifeanyi Uba, Senator Stella
Oduah; a former Minister of Aviation, John Emeka; and a member of the House of
Representatives, Lynda Ikpeazu.
Oduah,
who withdrew from the primary, cited imposition of candidates on the party for
her action.
Meanwhile,
one of the aspirants in the just concluded governorship primary of the All
Progressives Congress in the Anambra State, Nonso Madu, has warned the party
against cancelling the outcome of the primary which produced Tony Nwoye.
He
noted that speculations of the existence of a plot to set aside the results of
the primary were already generating a lot of tension among supporters.
Madu,
who said this in Abuja, on Saturday, noted that Anambra delegates voted for the
candidate of their choice and that any decision to void the outcome of the
process would adversely affect the chances of the APC in the November 18 poll.
Madu
said, “Over 4,000 APC members in Anambra State participated and voted in the
primary election as delegates. This includes youths, elderly men and women,
nursing mothers and physically challenged persons.”
He
further noted that the entire process lasted for over 48 hours as delegates had
left their various homes and wards to converge on the state capital, Awka, on
August 25
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