Reports: Six NATO Allies Against Georgia’s MAP

Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Norway and Spain are resisting extending NATO Membership Action Plan to Georgia and Ukraine, the Financial Times reported on March 14.

Britain, the Financial Times said, believed Ukraine and Georgia should get MAP status “but that the Bucharest summit is not the right place to do it.”

It also reported that Germany was starting to work on a compromise that would see NATO offering Ukraine and Georgia a newly created status that would be below MAP, called the “Action Plan.” “However, one European diplomat questioned whether the concept had any real meaning,” the Financial Times reported.

Daniel Fried, the acting U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs, said on March 11 during hearings at the U.S. Senate foreign affairs committee that Georgia and Ukraine were not ready for NATO membership now, “as they themselves recognize.” He, however, added: “We can help them to help themselves, as they are asking, just as we have helped others, through the Membership Action Plan. MAP is the next step for them, and the timing of that step will be a key issue for the Bucharest [NATO] Summit on [April 2-4].”

At the same hearing, James Townsend, Director of International Security Program at the Atlantic Council of the United States, a Washington-based think-tank, said that NATO should extend MAP to Georgia at the Bucharest summit on April 2-4, but if there is no consensus, he suggested, the alliance should “decide the question of MAP after the spring parliamentary elections, if Allies need reassurance that democratic reform is working again in Georgia.”

“At a minimum, the Alliance could offer a program of intensive military reform assistance to Georgia similar to that between NATO planners and Ukraine to give Georgian reform efforts a boost until there is consensus at NATO to offer Georgia participation in MAP,” he added.

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