Azerbaijan, Baku, 13 March /corr. Trend E.Huseynov, Z.Novosvitiski, N.Kirskhalia / Ukraine and Georgia hopes to receive a positive response in joining NATO during the coming Bucharest summit of the Alliance although many experts have doubts on this issue. "The statement that Ukraine will not join the NATO Membership Action Plan in the April summit has a basis," Ukrainian MP Anatoly Kinakh said.
On 15 January Ukraine's President, Victor Yushenka, Prime Minister, Yulia Timashenko, and Chairman of the Supreme Rada, Arseni Yatsenuk, made an appeal to the NATO Secretary-General, saying that Ukraine considers joining NATO Membership Action Plan during the Bucharest summit. The high-ranking representatives of Georgia also made such a statement recently.
"From the point of view of the Bucharest summit, considering the situation in Georgia, firstly we are not prepared to take such a step. I think that the NATO participating countries, especially large countries such as France and Germany already expressed their opinion on this issue. I am sure that the summit will make a sensible and balanced decision in order to intensify a contradiction in Ukraine," the member of Ukrainian Supreme Rada's Committee for National Security and Defence, Kinakh, reported to Trend .
According to Kinakh, firstly it needs to achieve a certain level of support and political concession in order to realize such plans. "From the point of view of the Ukrainian society's attitude towards NATO, we know that practically two-thirds of the citizens do not support it," the MP said. He considers that each step in this regard should be taken openly, "but not to do it in the backroom".
The NATO Secretary-General's Special Representative for Caucasus and Middle Asia, Robert Simmons, said last week in Baku that he has doubts that Ukraine will receive an invitation to join the NATO Membership Action Plan.
The Chancellor of Germany, Angel Merkel, opposed Ukraine and Georgia's entrance to NATO. She explained her position with the issue that the North Atlantic Alliance brings together only countries where this decision is being supported by the significant part of the population, and the majority of the Ukraine population opposes it. In addition, Merkel said that it is impossible for NATO to admit countries sustaining regional conflicts.
According to the Deputy Defence Minister of Georgia, Batu Kutelia, irrespective of Germany's pessimistic protest against Georgia's entrance to the NATO, Germany's position will not be considered important and the country may receive Membership Action Plan in the Bucharest summit. "We believe that during the Bucharest summit, Georgia will be able to gain the necessary number of NATO member-countries - supporters of presenting MAP to Georgia, which is necessary to make a positive decision," Kutelia said in Tbilisi.
Russia's representative to NATO Dmitry Rogozin considers that Georgia's receiving MAP will complicate its relations with Russia and force Abkhazia and South Osetia to more actively achieve recognition of their independence. "If NATO begins an active process to include Georgia in the Alliance, Moscow and other countries will need to recognize independence of the unrecognized Caucasus republics. It will make the future of the Alliance difficult," Rogozin said in his interview with Associated Press.
According to the U.S. military expert, Teda Karpentera, although Washington seems oblivious to the negative impact that attempting to include Georgia and Ukraine in NATO will have on the West's already deteriorating relationship with Russia, some European powers are more sensitive to the danger. "Incredibly, though, the U.S. seems determined to go forward with this scheme. Only time will tell if Washington can bully its NATO partners into endorsing its policy preferences. Russian objections will not be decisive in preventing those two countries from joining NATO, but reluctance on the part of several current European members might be," he said.
The Foreign Ministers of 26 NATO member-countries, who came together in Brussels on 6 March, did not make any decision on including Ukraine and Georgia in MAP.