Nine former-communist NATO members, plus Canada, urged the rest of the Atlantic alliance to overcome splits and open the door to former Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia at its summit next month, Lithuania said on Thursday.
Lithuanian foreign ministry spokeswoman Violeta Gaizauskaite said that the nation was among the 10 signatories of a letter addressed to NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and copied to other member states.
She refused to give details of the content, but confirmed reports that it argued in favor of instigating a process that might lead to Georgia and Ukraine joining the alliance.
Gaizauskaite said the letter was also signed by Lithuania's fellow 2004 NATO ex-communist entrants Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania, plus Poland and the Czech Republic, which joined in 1999, and Canada, a founding member in 1949.
"We indeed got the letter on Wednesday," a member state diplomat at NATO's Brussels headquarters said on condition of anonymity.
Russia vehemently opposes the NATO ambitions of neighbors and Soviet-era vassals Ukraine and Georgia and has accused the Western alliance of trying to encircle it.
The Baltic News Service (BNS) agency reported that the letter said NATO's April 2 to April 4 summit in Romania must offer Ukraine and Georgia a "Membership Action Plan" (MAP).
Such accords have been used in the past to help other former communist bloc countries meet NATO standards and steer them into the Western military club, and both Kiev and Tbilisi have been lobbying hard for one.
BNS said the letter argued that giving Ukraine and Georgia a MAP would increase stability and security in Europe and stressed that failure to act at the Bucharest summit would dent NATO's "open door" policy.
Gaizauskaite confirmed the BNS report was accurate.
Poland's PAP news agency, meanwhile, reported that the letter warned that turning down Ukraine and Georgia would mean "losing a chance to anchor these countries" in the Western defense camp.
In the face of Russian opposition, the issue of ties between the 26-nation NATO and Ukraine and Georgia is expected to be one of the highest-profile subjects on the table at the summit.
Scheffer has himself said the summit should give a clear signal the alliance's door is open to both countries.
NATO works by consensus, so the unanimous approval of all members is required.
Despite support from NATO's powerhouse the US, plus Canada and most of the alliance's ex-communist members, there is reticence among many other states.
The doubters include Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain, as well as ex-communist Hungary, which joined NATO in 1999, officials in several of the countries and NATO diplomats said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing