Reconfirming NATO solidarity and its options for this century. This is Teodor Melescanu – the Defense Minister’s opinion about what’s at stake during the Bucharest NATO Summit. In an interview given to the B1TV TV station, Teodor Melescanu said that the NATO enlargement will, in this context, be an essential topic of the debates during the reunion. “NATO enlargement means, on the one hand, inviting other countries to become NATO members – we are mainly speaking of Croatia, Albania and Macedonia, which are the three candidate countries. On the other hand, it is about (…) enabling a dialogue which should allow other two candidate countries, Ukraine and Georgia, the perspective of joining NATO in a few years’ time, nobody knows exactly how many, because it all depends on reaching certain standards that NATO requires”, explained Teodor Melescanu.
In the Defense Ministry’s opinion, an actual discussion regarding the presence of the Alliance in Afghanistan will take place during the Bucharest NATO Summit: “a very factual discussion, will undoubtedly take place, regarding Afghanistan. NATO’s operations in Afghanistan are for NATO a very important test of its capacity of getting involved in a battle against terrorism and drug traffic”.
Besides NATO enlargement and maintaining the Alliance troops in Afghanistan, the issue of energetic resources will also be part of the Summit agenda, as Minister Melescanu anticipated; he also added the issue of protection against cybernetic attacks, “which threatens to become a major problem in the near future”. “These are topics to which I would add, surely without knowing how the discussion would evolve, the Kosovo issue. NATO is involved in Kosovo and according to the evolution of the situation, NATO will have to adapt and make adjustments, or maybe to bring in certain policies”, Teodor Melescanu stated.
Beyond the important issue of reconfirming NATO’s solidarity, the Defense Ministry wanted to underline that “the stakes are indeed high, and the highest one which I think will dominate the Summit, is going to be the relationship between NATO and the Russian Federation. Because if you take a look at all the above mentioned issues on the agenda, to which many other topics may be added, such as the anti-missile shield, all issues are connected to the impact such a decision would have on Russia and its reaction.”.
(Source: B1 TV)
