21.   NATO says the enlargement will be a gradual affair likely to take several years.

22.   NATO Secretary General Willy Claes emphasized that the enlargement is not a threat to Russia or any other country.

23.   The enlargement was not unusual for a man his age, the palace statement said.

24.   U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who visited Moscow on Thursday and Friday, was unable to convince the Russians that NATO enlargement would not be a threat.

25.   Western governments may sincerely have believed that NATO enlargement would be a force for European stability.

26.   Yet without those cuts Union enlargement would be impossible.

27.   But for Clinton, NATO enlargement is a top foreign policy goal.

28.   Clinton had cause for satisfaction as he arrived back from Helsinki after Yeltsin all but conceded at their two-day summit that NATO enlargement was inevitable.

29.   Its enlargement will be steady and deliberate, not a rushed process.

30.   Lebed told the Financial Times that NATO enlargement would be expensive and unnecessary but that he had no objections to it.