The NACC Ad Hoc Group on Cooperation in Peacekeeping was given the charter of "developing a common understanding on the political principles of and the tools for peacekeeping, and to share experience and thereby develop common practical approaches and co-operation in support of peacekeeping under the responsibility of the UN or the CSCE."[footnote #25] The Ad Hoc Group itself was opened to non-NACC members of the CSCE, who could participate in its meetings as observers and contribute to informational sessions and cooperation activities agreed to by the Group.[footnote #26] Over the first six months of 1993, the Ad Hoc Group was able to succeed, where NATO had stalled, in producing a document covering terminology, general criteria and operational principles for peace support operations. Their initial report was presented to the NACC Ministers in Athens in June 1993.[footnote #27] However, the NACC Ad Hoc Group's success should be viewed against the fact that, unlike NATO itself, the NACC charter does not invest it with any direct operational authority. As a result, Allies who had resisted efforts to conclude agreement on a NATO document outlining peacekeeping doctrinežone that would apply to employment of their own military forces under a NATO banneržwere less opposed to a more general NACC document that set forward principles to foster "common understanding on conceptual approaches and a common program for practical cooperation aimed at sharing information and experiences."[footnote #28] Nevertheless, the NACC Ministers in Athens did note that there was a possibility that "practical cooperation" could include joint training, education and exercises.[footnote #29] At the level of military-to-military contacts under the NACC programs, this was an accurate assessment. NATO's military authorities and their Central and Eastern European counterparts had jumped at the opportunity for cooperation provided by the NACC framework, and efforts were well underway to support the transition of the military establishments of the former Warsaw Pact nations into organizations more compatible with NATO procedures and democratic forms of governance. Unfortunately, the pace of military contacts exceeded the pace of political cooperation within the NACC, with the result being a growing misperception in some quarters that NATO was more interested in cooperation with active Eastern military leadership than with developing democratic leadership.
This perceptual problem was exacerbated by one of the most serious shortcomings of the NACC program: it had no defense ministerial component. At the time the NACC charter was drafted in 1991, many allies still had reservations about opening NATO's defense planning process to their former adversaries. Moreover, due to the fact that France did not participate in NATO's Defense Planning Committee (DPC), which was the forum for defense ministerial contacts within the Alliance, Paris had blocked inclusion of any specific reference to meetings of Defense Ministers in the NACC charter. Consequently, the institution that, in most Western democracies, is most instrumental in exercising civilian control over the military establishment was missing from the NACC framework. Subsequent efforts to redress this gap by creating a NACC Group on Defense Matters (GDM) independent of the DPC did not go far enough in satisfying French concerns to achieve NATO consensus. While the GDM did nevertheless establish a forum for NATO's Defense Ministers to meet with their NACC counterparts, it had no legal institutional linkage to either NATO or the NACC. The result was that a critical component for coordinating the pace of political and military development was missing from the NACC.