By Jeffrey Ulbrich, Associated Press, 03/27/99

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Javier Solana Madariaga, who once fought against Spain's membership in NATO, is now the man at its helm.

Javier Solana Madariaga (AP Photo)

Solana, 56, a dapper Spaniard with a salt-and-pepper beard, took over at NATO in December 1995, directly after a six-month hitch at the 15-nation European Union. As Spain's foreign minister while his country held the rotating presidency of the EU, Solana was head of the EU Council of Ministers, which enacts EU-wide laws.

In that job, trying to construct agreements encompassing widely divergent views on subjects ranging from agricultural subsidies to foreign policy, Solana won praise as a facilitator of compromise. Those skills are even more crucial at NATO, which is run entirely by consensus. Building that consensus - and more importantly, holding it together on such sensitive issues as bombing a country that is posing no direct threat to any NATO country - is a demanding job.

Despite being a second choice after Washington sank the hopes of former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, Solana has proved himself an able leader and his warm, direct personality has made him popular among NATO diplomats and in Western capitals.

The son of an illustrious Spanish family, Solana moved from the antimilitarism of his student days in the early 1960s under the regime of Gen. Francisco Franco to foreign minister of a staunchly pro-NATO government in Madrid.

Solana earned a doctorate in physics, was a Fulbright scholar at several American universities and taught solid-state physics at Madrid Complutense University. He joined the Spanish Socialist Party in 1964 and became a member of Parliament in 1977.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he and other Socialist leaders marched against U.S. military bases in Spain and called for a referendum to take Spain out of NATO, which it joined in 1982.

Solana, who served in the Spanish Cabinet from 1982-95, says his early attitudes were influenced by his student years in the United States during the unrest over Vietnam and the civil rights movement.

Solana's able leadership has steered the alliance through some difficult times. He took over the day that NATO led 60,000 troops from 30 nations into Bosnia to implement the Dayton peace agreement. That operation is continuing, though at a lower level with about 30,000 troops.

The secretary-general guided NATO through a transition from Cold War thinking aimed mainly at protecting the West from a menacing Soviet Union to a new NATO that has set itself a more wide-ranging mission.

He saw it through its first enlargement since 1982, admitting former Warsaw Pact members Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, and is overseeing plans to expand it further.

Solana's term ends at the end of the year. He has not said whether he intends to seek another.