It was the venue for some of the most important and dramatic moments in Nato's history but on Friday the alliance bid farewell to its historic "Room 1" conference chamber. For 50 years Nato leaders, ministers and ambassadors have held their most important debates and taken their biggest decisions in the brown leather chairs of Room 1, buried in the alliance's crumbling old base on the outskirts of Brussels. Now Nato is moving to a brand new high-tech glass and steel headquarters, leaving behind a building steeped in Cold War history.
Friday's meeting of foreign ministers was the last to be held in Room 1 and Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg closed proceedings by symbolically banging an ornate wooden gavel donated by Iceland in the 1960s. "In Allied navies there is often a tradition of formally decommissioning warships. Today, we decommission this chamber," Stoltenberg said.
"If they could speak, these walls would have many tales to tell." Room 1 was where Nato's Article 5 self-defence pact was invoked for the first and only time in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. It was also where allies decided to launch military interventions in the Balkans, Libya and Afghanistan.
In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as the West fretted about what role a reunified Germany might play in Europe, then German chancellor Helmut Kohl jumped in his official car and raced to Nato headquarters.
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