Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen holds a press conference at the annual Informal Meeting of NATO Defense Ministers at the International Conference Center in Birmingham, England, on Oct. 10, 2000. Each Autumn a different member of the 19-nation security alliance hosts the informal meeting in which a range of security issues are freely discussed, but no binding decisions are made. All binding agreements are left to the biannual defense ministerial held at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.