Rice: Georgia Needs to Take Practical Steps to Join NATO

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on February 11 that Georgia and Ukraine need to ?take a lot of practical steps before joining the NATO.?
 
?We want very much to see Georgia and Ukraine as well as others to be part of the European mainstream,? Rice told European journalists in Luxembourg, where she arrived as a part of her first foreign tour as the U.S. Secretary of State.
 
?But while NATO maintains an open door to any European democracy, there are a lot of practical steps that Georgia and Ukraine can be taking that are not issues of membership. So I think we need to concentrate on the practical work before us, not the issue of membership, though of course we have always said that NATO has to remain open to all European democracies,? she added.