R.N. Burns IV With Katja Gloger of Stern Magazine - Excerpt on Kosovo

QUESTION: And you will keep cooperate completely now, share the Balkans (inaudible) forward?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yeah. Look, German, American troops are together in Kosovo, in Bosnia, in Afghanistan and now in Darfur. So NATO is playing -- and NATO is in Iraq. NATO is playing a much more expansive role than it ever was before. You know, NATO was created, really because of the German problem back in the 1940s -- the division of Germany -- and we wanted to prevent a continental war. We wanted to prevent aggression by the Soviet Union with the Warsaw Pact. And now NATO had a very different purpose. It represents the will of the countries involved to be peacekeepers in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Kosovo, in Bosnia, in Macedonia, in Darfur. And the world needs a military organization that can be the most successful peacekeeping organization in the world. I think NATO is that already. It's certainly the most in demand. We're being asked to go everywhere, it seems.