Leaders of the 26 states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are due to gather in Germany on April 3 for a two-day summit, which will be held in Strasburg, France and a beautiful German border town of Kehl, which is adjacent to Strasburg.

Potential topics of discussion at the two-day NATO summit include, among other subjects, issuing a Declaration on Alliance Security, seeking a way out for the Afghanistan issue, discussing NATO's ties with Russia, France's reintegration into NATO's military command, recruiting Croatia and Albania as new NATO members, and choosing or defining the new secretary general of NATO. The most essential topic is, however, to set the keynote for its future development.

2009 is a year of vital importance for NATO. In this year, the Declaration on Alliance Security to be presented will constitute one of major attainments for the summit. By its 60th anniversary in the year, NATO should have a new Atlantic Charter, and a more detailed new "strategic concept" to be drafted for approval next year, according to tentative ideas of its leaders.

The Alliance's Strategic Concept was approved a full decade ago at the Washington Summit held in April 1999. These tentative ideas of high-level NATO leadership, nevertheless, have so far failed to draw enough support from NATO member states, and so they have to "downgrade" NATO's increase political reach. In the words of NATO leaders, the Declaration on Alliance Security will enunciate reasons for NATO to continue in existence, provide political guidelines for the new strategic concept and show the orientation or the way forward for its development.

On the Russia-related issue, NATO has resolved to have contact with Russia, but the prospects for its cooperation with the country needs further observations. In fact, NATO foreign ministers agreed in early March to resume high-level formal talks with Russia after Lithuania withdrew its objections to restart the so-called NATO-Russia Council after the alliance's summit on April 3-4.

Nevertheless, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland then still had a reserved attitude, and some new NATO member states remained wary of any engagement with Russia. In comparison, old NATO member countries, however, stressed their "globalized" function, looked to NATO to safeguard global security and, therefore, underscored all the more the importance of their cooperation with Russia.

France will be "warmly welcomed" for its decision to return into NATO's integrated military command. Its NATO allies know very clearly its move, which is aimed, among other objectives, to ease the U.S.-EU relations and to step up its cooperation with the United States; to increase its say within the NATO and have a full voice in consultations over new strategic concept documents; to clear U.S. of doubts, to ease the relations between the NATO and the European Union (EU) and to spur the construction of European Security efficiently and effectively.

Moreover, France prompts NATO and EU to move toward the direction of cooperation with Russia for the sake of its own national interest. Its return to NATO's integrated military command, nevertheless, would be a gradual process and it is definitely certain not to be achieved overnight by one summit.

On the issue of NATO enlargement, the entry of Croatia and Albania is seen as a foregone conclusion and, with regard to the choice of new NATO secretary general, the prolonged convention of taking up the post by a European is definitely not easy to change or overturn.

The Strasburg-Kohl summit is sure to leave behind a very "heavy stroke" in the history of NATO, but there is not too much to expect from it. Anyway, not a single summit can heal or patch up great differences or disparities across the Atlantic Ocean overnight.

NATO was founded in 1949 as a military organization in the early years of the Cold War. Its initial members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the U.S.

By People's Daily Online and its author is PD resident reporter in Belgium Zhang Niansheng