The Associated Press

BRUSSELS -- Pierre Harmel, a former Belgian foreign minister who authored a 1967 strategy that led the NATO allies to seek detente with the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, has died, the government said Monday. He was 98.

The Belgian government said Harmel died on Sunday.

His report, entitled "Future Tasks of the Alliance," became NATO policy in December 1967. At a time of a deep freeze in East-West relations, it said NATO would respond to any military attack from the Soviet Union and its communist allies, but also pursue a thaw in political ties with its adversaries.

"Military security and a policy of detente are not contradictory, but complementary," said the Cold War NATO doctrine that came to bear Harmel's name.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Harmel's work inspires the alliance today as it faces unconventional security threats such as piracy, uncertain energy supplies, terrorism, climate change and rogue states.

"While the international security situation has changed dramatically since (1967), the 'Harmel process' remains an example and inspiration to the Alliance," said Fogh Rasmussen.

Harmel's detente strategy, a major shift for NATO, led to the 1975 Helsinki accords in which 35 European nations pledged to respect national sovereignty, settle disputes peacefully and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Wary that these were lofty goals at a time when the Iron Curtain cut Europe in half, the Harmel Doctrine also asserted that a "possibility of an (East-West) crisis cannot be excluded as long as" Germany and Berlin remained divided into eastern and western spheres.

Harmel was born March 16, 1911 in Brussels. A Francophone Christian Democrat, he served as minister of education and justice in the 1950s and 60s before his brief term as Belgian premier in 1965-66. He became foreign minister after that.