Brussels 24 April 2019 - The NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s 100th Rose-Roth seminar is set to open in Brussels, Belgium, on 25 April. The 2-day meeting will bring together over 100 NATO Parliamentarians to celebrate the legacy of the Assembly’s flagship Rose-Roth partnership initiative and the parliamentary dimension of NATO partnerships and enlargement and chart the way forward for the Assembly’s outreach and engagement with partners.
The Rose-Roth programme was created in 1990 by then President of the Assembly late United States Congressman Charlie Rose and Senator Bill Roth as a channel for cooperation with the parliaments of the former Warsaw Pact countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
Since the first seminar held in Lithuania in 1991, the Rose-Roth programme has brought together parliamentarians from NATO member states and NATO partners, senior NATO officials, presidents and ministers, generals, ambassadors, academics, experts, journalists and civil society activists, to exchange best practices and seek common solutions to security and political challenges.
A special tribute to the founding fathers of the programme will be delivered by Mr Ripley Rand, former advisor to Congressman Rose, and Dr Ian Brzezinski, who worked for Senator Roth.
Speaking ahead of the event, Mr Rand noted: “I doubt Charlie Rose and Bill Roth had any idea in 1990 when they initiated a cooperative programme between the North Atlantic Assembly and many Central and Eastern European countries that they were creating a vibrant, multidimensional partnership that would be going strong and expanding into new arenas almost thirty years later. The work of the Rose-Roth seminar participants through the International Secretariat of NATO-PA has been, and will continue to be, crucial in the ongoing effort to address complex international problems and meet emerging security challenges.”
The anniversary seminar will be hosted in cooperation with the Belgian Federal Parliament, NATO Public Diplomacy Division, the government of Switzerland and the Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces (DCAF).
For further information about the Rose-Roth programme and its legacy, click here.
