PARTNERSHIP WITH NATO DOES NOT SUPPOSE OBLIGATORY MEMBERSHIP, REPRESENTATIVE OF ARMENIA IN NATO CONSIDERS

Noyan Tapan
Mar 14 2007

YEREVAN, MARCH 14, NOYAN TAPAN. Armenia widely cooperates with NATO,
in particular, the Individual Partnership Actions Plan (IPAP) is
rather large.

Samvel Mkrtchian, Resident Representative of Armenia in NATO, stated
this at the March 14 press conference. At the same time, he said
that currently the Armenian leadership does not discuss the issue of
membership to NATO.

In S. Mkrtchian’s words, partnership with NATO does not suppose
that the country will have the goal to join NATO without fail. In
S. Mkrtchian’s words, each country itself estimates threats of its
national security and chooses the ways of resisting them.

In addition to 26 member-countries, today NATO has 23
partner-countries, and not all of them have expressed willingness to
join NATO in the future. S. Mkrtchian said that currently Macedonia,
Croatia and Albania implement membership actions plans. They hope that
they will receive membership invitations at the 2008 summit. Ukraine
and Georgia received "format of strengthened political dialogue"
with NATO in 2006. Georgia, in S. Mkrtchian’s words, strains great
efforts in the direction of joining the organization.

It was mentioned that in case of joining NATO Georgia will be the
second member of NATO after Turkey, which has a common border with
Armenia. Regional countries’ membership to NATO can generate problems
for Armenia being a member of CSTO: today the common border with
Turkey is closed and it is not known how the relations with Georgia
will develop in the future.

In S. Mkrtchian’s words, trying to form a united security system in
the South Caucasus and not seeing its prospects in consideration of
Armenia-Azerbaijan relations, Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Georgia’s
strained relations with Russia and a number of other factors,
NATO has brought forward the idea of IPAP program. It will enable
to cooperate with each country with the depth, with which that
country wishes to develop its relations with NATO. In the future
the relations of countries with that organization will depend on
regional developments. S. Mkrtchian said that EU has also adopted
the same approach by working out individual cooperation programs with
regional countries.