After four years of work, the Czech Republic appears ready to enter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The entrance of the country will mark a significant triumph for the Czech leader, Vaclav Havel. After a background report on President Havel's life, he sits down for a conversation with Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: Thank you for being with us, Mr. President. Tell us, what do you think of the deal announced this week between NATO and Russia concerning NATO expansion?

PRESIDENT VACLAV HAVEL, Czech Republic: (speaking through interpreter) I think that the agreement is very important and useful. I think its a--agreement for both sides. And it's in keeping with what I have always thought. I've always believed that NATO enlargement should be pursued against the background of some sort of an understanding with the Russian Federation and this is what has happened just now.

MARGARET WARNER: You made it clear during these earlier discussions that you didn't want NATO to accept any limitations on its activities in the new member countries, nothing that would make the new member countries feel like second class members. Are you satisfied on that score?

PRESIDENT VACLAV HAVEL: (speaking through interpreter) Yes, I believe that nobody can perceive the kind of agreement between the alliance and Russia as some sort of negotiation about us, without us, like some great powers, dividing spheres of influence between themselves, or deciding the fate of smaller nations. There was no reason whatsoever why this agreement should be interpreted in this way.

MARGARET WARNER: Explain, if you could, to Americans who are just now really beginning to think about NATO expansion. Why is it important for a country like the Czech Republic to be in NATO?

PRESIDENT VACLAV HAVEL: (speaking through interpreter) Why is this important for us? Look, I was the one who wanted half of the Warsaw Pact, declared several years ago that the Warsaw Pact had decided to dissolve itself, Czechoslovakia was the presiding nation then, and I was president of Czechoslovakia at the time. And the reason why we were abolishing the Warsaw Pact was that we knew it had been an instrument of the Soviets and Germany that had rid us of our independence and had been meant to defend a totalitarian system. And we wanted to be a democracy and independent nation that shares the same values that the western democratic world subscribes to. We have not dissolved the Warsaw Pact in order to find ourselves in some sort of a vacuum belonging nowhere, and in order to be deprived of the possibility to be united with those that share the same values. And this is why I deem it tremendously important from the moral, psychological point of view.

I believe that it's simply impossible for the North Atlantic Alliance to consider itself to be simply some sort of a Cold War veterans club that would be closed and that would believe it has enough democracies for members and does not need more. This would be a misleading way of thinking. For us, it's important in order to build firm anchors within the democratic structures, after all, we have been through and after we have rid ourselves of the Communist totalitarian regime. But it is no less important for everyone else for the whole of Europe or the Euro-Atlantic region and its policy. Europe has always been one political body that necessarily has to be organized as a whole. It is simply unthinkable to have a peaceful order in one half of Europe and to leave the other half to itself because disorder or unrest in one half of Europe would immediately spread to the ordered half as well. We can't have a room one half which would be warm and the other half cold. That's simply impossible.

MARGARET WARNER: Tell us a little bit about life in the Czech Republic. It's been seven years since you threw off Communist totalitarianism. What's this new world like, do you think, for the average Czech citizen?

PRESIDENT VACLAV HAVEL: (speaking through interpreter) In my view the Czech Republic of today is basically moving in the direction which most of our people wanted it to go in those days when we rose against Communism, that means we are building democratic institutions, so we have freedom of expression. We are building market economy in our country, et cetera. I don't think we have left that cause in any way, but it becomes obvious that progress along this path is much more complicated than many thought in the initial days and weeks of the post revolution euphoria and the difficulties which are profound and difficult are the issues that confront us, and we are trying to deal with it. It's possible to introduce a dictatorship and nationalize everything overnight, but to reconstruct the former condition, to rebuild a democratic, civil society, to return all of the property to private owner is tremendously complicated. It's possible to smash up a fine piece of furniture in 30 seconds, but it may take months to assemble it again. And this is the kind of process that my country is going through right now.

MARGARET WARNER: Would you say that life is better in every way, or that Czechs are better off in every way, not just economically but psychologically or spiritually or politically, or is something lost, has something been lost at all in this embrace of the free market and democracy?

PRESIDENT VACLAV HAVEL: (speaking through interpreter) This is a very complicated matter. First of all, people get used very easily to the good things. For example, by now almost nobody remembers that it was, for example, impossible to travel under the Communist regime, that people had no passports or could go to prison for a verb or a sentence uttered in a park, and there were times that the newspapers were not free to write what they wanted. People have got used to that very fast, and they no longer rejoice at this. They rather take it for granted. And in a way, this is the right so, so if they are nostalgically longing for something, but of course they also take it for granted that now it's possible to have private enterprise and develop initiatives in different ways. If there are nostalgic longings for anything, it may be longings for the paternalist state that solved everything for the people, that made no great demands on these people's responsibility for their own lives; that took care of the population from the cradle to the grave; and those people who found that convenient may feel a certain nostalgia at present.

MARGARET WARNER: And finally for yourself, after being--I mean, you're a playwright, artist, writer--have you found politics satisfying?

PRESIDENT VACLAV HAVEL: (speaking through interpreter) I am a man who finds pleasure and gratification in every creative activity that bears fruit. This is most important to me, and it's of lesser importance whether the activity is one in theater or one in politics. What bothers me is a situation when what is moving in a circle and sees no results of his or her work. If politics brings positive results, it pleases me. If I see no such results, I may feel the same kind of frustration that I may feel when trying to write a play and failing to do so.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thank you very much, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT VACLAV HAVEL: Thank you.