NATO agrees Ukraine, Georgia will one day enter

BUCHAREST - NATO leaders agreed on Thursday the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia would one day join NATO despite opposition by former Soviet master Russia.
“We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO,” NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference, reading from a communique agreed at a summit of the defence alliance’s 26 leaders in Bucharest.
“That is quite something,” he said.
Alliance leaders failed on Wednesday to agree to offer Ukraine and Georgia a Membership Action Plan (MAP), a gateway to eventual membership, but decided on Thursday to review their progress in December, diplomats said.
They made the pledge after NATO leaders, including U.S. President George W. Bush, said former Cold War foe Moscow should have no influence on decisions on who is invited to join the alliance.
Germany and France had led opposition to putting Ukraine and Georgia on a path to membership, saying neither met NATO’s criteria yet, and that the decision would be an unnecessary provocation to Russian President-elect Dmitry Medvedev.
Public support for NATO is barely 30 percent in Ukraine and Georgia does not control all of its territory because of frozen conflicts with Russian-backed separatists.
MACEDONIA DISAPPOINTED
On other enlargement decisions, Macedonia’s request for an invitation to join was blocked by Greece in a row over its name.
Macedonia was told an invitation could be issued by ambassadors as soon as a “mutually acceptable solution” to the name issue was found, NATO states agreed in a communique.
That means Macedonia, whose fate is important for stability in the Balkans, may not have to await until NATO’s summit next year for a decision. But there was no hiding Skopje’s dejection.
“This is a huge disappointment. We have been told we have done everything we should have done in terms of reforms and military contributions. We are being punished because we are Macedonians,” government spokesman Nikola Dimitrov said.
“It is a decision which goes against stability in the Balkans. It encourages all the radical forces,” he said.
Greece objects to use of the name Macedonia because this is the name of Greece’s most northerly province.
A new era beckons for the alliance after French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for a decision soon on France’s reintegration into the NATO military structures it left in 1966.
“I reaffirm here France’s determination to pursue the process of renovating its relations with NATO,” Sarkozy told the leaders.
France has said it wants a strengthening of European defence integration as a condition for rejoining the integrated military command from which General Charles de Gaulle withdrew it more than four decades ago in a row over command arrangements.