Dan Fried: Georgia, Ukraine far away from NATO

PanARMENIAN.Net - NATO will probably not offer membership to Ukraine and Georgia for years to come, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday before an alliance meeting next week that is expected to discuss the issue.



The Bush administration has supported putting the two former Soviet republics on a formal path, called a Membership Action Plan, towards joining NATO. But there is considerable European opposition, which has grown since Georgia's war with Russia in August.



Rather than get into a "huge debate" next week, NATO should make it clear that Ukraine and Georgia are still welcome and the alliance stands ready to help them become members, Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried said.



"I think it's fair to predict there would be no NATO membership offer for some years to come, just taking a look at these countries realistically, and they wouldn't disagree," Fried, in charge of European and Eurasian affairs, told reporters at the State Department. "We ought to concentrate on the areas where the alliance is already agreed, which is that these countries will join NATO but they have a lot of work to do and we will help them."



NATO leaders promised Ukraine and Georgia at a summit in Bucharest in April that they would one day join the Western defense alliance but declined to offer them the formal path towards membership because of French and German objections.



The alliance's foreign ministers are to review the two countries' progress in Brussels on December 2 and 3.



Fried said there was realism in Washington and other capitals about the work Georgia and Ukraine must do to become stable democracies that could join the 26-nation alliance, Reuters reports.