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August 19th, 2008

Defense Minister sees Georgia joining NATO

By Hungary Around the Clock

Defense Minister Imre Szekeres agreed with US ambassador April Foley on Monday that Georgia has a place in NATO. Addressing reporters in Szolnok, they recalled that NATO heads of state and government agreed on this last spring and it still holds true.

Nevertheless, Georgia will not be represented at the October NATO summit in Budapest, Szekeres told state news agency MTI. All NATO defense ministers as well as those from Croatia and Albania will be present.

Foley added that the recent Russian operation against Georgia exceeded peacekeeping frameworks and created a humanitarian disaster.

NATO foreign ministers will meet in Brussels today to discuss the alliance’s response to Russia’s incursion into Georgia.

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3 Comments

  1. Demagogue says:
    August 20, 2008 at 12:53 am

    Come on everybody, let’s all join in with winding the really annoyed Putin/Russian mafia-bear/mincing machine up! Georgia. NATO. Bad idea. Always was. Too far east to be ‘North Atlantic’ anymore. Turkey took the piss, Baltics just about tolerated. Let’s not get silly and start having guys practically in Asia in the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
    For a start, we’d have to give it a new name. And the money paid to consultants to research the new name would wind Stan up too much. And me for that matter.

  2. Viking says:
    August 21, 2008 at 10:05 am

    Replace the individual memeberships by different EU-states, with a standing EU-Army. This EU-Army will then of course contain contributions from EU-States that are currently non-NATO members.
    Individual membership outside the EU should be limited as much as possible to basically only the US.
    Normally the name is not the big cost, but the symbol. Let Stan submit the first proposal.

  3. Adrian D. says:
    August 21, 2008 at 5:57 pm

    Viking,
    “Replace the individual memeberships by different EU-states, with a standing EU-Army”
    Nice idea, unlikely to happy. Sarkozy just scrapped the joint German/French division as part of his bid to rejoin NATO’s command structure. (I can’t find a link for but remember seeing it on Euronews.)
    The US has no interest in NATO becoming a partnership of equals – why should it – and is only happy to pay for the defence of Europe as long as it can decide what the policies and priorties are.
    The problem is Europe doesn’t want to pay for its own defense, Sarkozy is rejoining NATO to save money on defence spending.