The U.S. Senate approved the accession of Montenegro to NATO
WASHINGTON, March 28. /Offset. TASS Anatoly Bochinin/. The U.S. Senate ratified the Protocol on accession of Montenegro to NATO. This decision is supported by the vast majority of members of the upper house.
At the Alliance’s summit in December 2009 Montenegro received the action plan for membership in the bloc. In 2010 started the negotiations that ended in may 2016 with the signing of the Protocol of accession to the organization, after which the country received the observer status.
After the ratification of this Protocol by all States of the Alliance and Montenegro, this country will become the 29th member of NATO. A Protocol to this day ratified by 24 of the 28 countries of the organization, but the U.S. Senate for a long time did not put this question to the vote.
This month do it the senators urged Secretary of state Rex Tillerson. “The ratification of membership of Montenegro in NATO is fully consistent with the interests of the United States,” he said in a letter to the Republican leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell and the head of the faction of the Democrats of the Charles Schumer.
Despite the almost unanimous position of the chamber, against the ratification of the actively were two Republican senators — Rand Paul and Michael Lee. Paul even blocked a vote on ratification of the Protocol on the simplified procedure proposed by the head of the Senate Committee on armed services John McCain, who responded by accusing his counterpart in the “work for (Russian President) Vladimir Putin.”
“If Ukraine and Georgia were NATO members, today we would find ourselves embroiled in a world war with Russia,” said Paul, speaking at a meeting of the Senate on Monday.
“One thing is clear — Russia will always be more to worry about these lands than we are. Does this justify Russian aggression? Of course not, but our decision implies that we are willing to send their sons and daughters to participate in the conflict on the border of Montenegro, which most Americans can’t find on the map,” he added.
Moscow’s Position
In Russia believe that NATO enlargement has led to increased tensions in Europe. This fact drew the attention of the Minister for foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov, speaking on 18 February at the Munich conference on security issues.
“NATO expansion has led to unprecedented over the last 30 years the level of tension in Europe. Judging by some of the speeches at the Munich conference, the cold war never ended”, he said.
At a press conference in Hamburg on 9 December 2016, the foreign Minister said that gave members of NATO documents dealing with interviews of Mikhail Gorbachev with Helmut Kohl, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Eduard Shevardnadze and James Baker.
“All of these figures have clearly said that no NATO expansion to the East will not. Moreover, the Alliance’s military infrastructure will not approach the borders of our country, — said Lavrov. — It’s all forgotten, close our borders to deploy new units and heavy weapons. For the first time the U.S. deploys its heavy equipment in the Baltic States, that never happened”.
From 12 members to 28
After the collapse of the USSR and the Soviet bloc members of NATO were 12 States: in 1999 Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic in 2004 — Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Estonia, in 2009 Albania and Croatia.
Currently, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization includes 28 countries, and an open-door policy continues. Among the candidates for NATO membership of Macedonia is registered in 2008 in Bucharest at the NATO summit a decision was adopted about the beginning of the program joining the Alliance of Georgia and Ukraine.