NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANISATION (NATO)

About:

• Attended by senior officials, including from the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Defence, the idea was to ensure the dialogue was primarily political in character, and to avoid making any commitment on military or other bilateral cooperation.
• The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or NATO, is a political and military alliance of 28 European countries and two countries in North America (United States and Canada).
• It was set up in 1949 by the US, Canada, and several western European nations to ensure their collective security against the Soviet Union. It was the US’s first peacetime military alliance outside the western hemisphere.
• Thirty countries are currently members of NATO, which is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. The headquarters of the Allied Command Operations is near Mons, also in Belgium.