NATO character gets round city first (5)
I believe the answer is:
romeo
'nato character' is the definition.
(NATO phonetic alphabet)
'round city first' is the wordplay.
'round' becomes 'o' (o is a circular letter).
'city' becomes 'rome' (Rome is an example).
'first' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'o' after 'rome' is 'ROMEO'.
'gets' is the link.
(Other definitions for romeo that I've seen before include "Peripheral figure" , "his tragedy one was late?" , "Comms code for R" , "He loved" , "He's a letter read out" .)