U.S. Senior Official Speaks of NATO Summit Results for Georgia

At the NATO Bucharest summit the United States “didn’t get everything we wanted, but we got a lot,” Daniel Fried, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, said on April 7.

He was referring to the NATO summit decision which delayed extending Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia and Ukraine, but at the same time giving the two countries an assurance that they would eventually become NATO members sometime in the future.

Speaking at a press briefing in Washington on April 7 Daniel Fried said that “what NATO did was of tremendous importance.”

“By saying that Ukraine and Georgia will someday be in NATO, NATO made a momentous strategic decision that avoids drawing a line in Europe,” he said. “Now, it is true that Georgia and Ukraine have a lot of work to do themselves. They acknowledge themselves that they’re not ready for NATO membership and it will take work. But NATO’s decision means that the language about the open door is something NATO really means. So it was a good day.”

He said that in the course of 36 hours of intense discussions in Bucharest, “one of the most interesting, complicated issues” was Georgia and Ukraine and those discussions “produced a higher level consensus than anyone would have thought possible the day before.”
 
“If I were Georgia, I would be very heartened by what NATO decided,” Fried said. “And indeed, President Saakashvili expressed it very well. You know what the NATO decision was and that flat statement that Georgia and Ukraine will become members of NATO was of historic importance… That’s a terribly important statement and it was one that Germany and France agreed to.”

Both Germany and France were leading an opposition within the NATO to extend MAP to Georgia and Ukraine at the Bucharest summit.

“I think that Germany and France had some questions about the readiness of Georgia and Ukraine,” he said without further going into details. “But it was clear in the course of the discussion that neither Germany nor France was in any way giving Russia a veto over NATO’s decisions.”