Budapest will host a meeting of NATO defence ministers on October 9 and 10, one of the largest-scale diplomatic events this country has ever seen, Defence Ministry Spokesman Istvan Bocskai told MTI on Friday.
The meeting will be attended by defence ministers of 42 countries in addition to 700 foreign guests. Apart from the 26 NATO member states, 16 countries involved in the operations of the military alliance system will be represented by their defence minister. The non-NATO members due to attend the meeting will include Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Georgia, Ireland, Jordan, Macedonia, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates.
The participants will discuss the situation of ongoing NATO operations (ISAF, KFOR) and the transformation of NATO.
The NATO-Georgia Committee, set up recently, will hold its first ministerial session in Budapest to discuss security and defence cooperation with Georgia.
In turn, the NATO-Russia and NATO-Ukraine committees will not meet in the Hungarian capital, the spokesman said.
On the sidelines of the meeting, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Hungary’s Defence Minister Imre Szekeres will attend a ceremony at the Parliament Square to welcome members of the Hungarian provincial reconstruction team returning from Afghanistan.
Will keep the red light district busy for those 2 days..:-)
“……and the transformation of NATO” ~~
I agree on this one, transformation of a defunct organization must be done! bout’ time!!