16 October 2006

United States Hopes Croatians' Support for NATO Will Grow

Croatia's prime minister scheduled to meet with Bush, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld

 

Secretary Rice meets with Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader at the State Department, Monday, October 16. (©AP Images)

Washington -- As Croatia’s prime minister prepared to meet senior U.S. officials in Washington, a U.S. diplomat said the United States appreciates Croatian participation in Afghanistan and hopes Croatia’s public support will grow for NATO membership.

“NATO membership is not simply a gift,” Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs told the Croatian News Agency (HINA) in an October 13 interview in Washington.

Fried stressed that the 26 members of the NATO alliance have pledged to defend one another and to work together to solve security problems in the world.

“Croatia is already contributing to the alliance's operations in Afghanistan so clearly you understand that,” Fried said. “I hope that more of Croatian society comes to support NATO membership because we're not the Warsaw Pact. We don't want members of NATO unless they want to be members of NATO.”

Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader was scheduled to meet President Bush in Washington on October 17. On his U.S. visit, Sanader also was scheduled to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney. (See related article.)

NATO membership is expected to be a topic of discussion at the NATO Summit in Riga, Latvia, on November 28 and 29. The summit in Riga is not expected to offer membership to any candidate countries, but alliance leaders might use the meeting as an opportunity to signal what conditions should be met for the candidate countries to be offered membership as early as 2008.  Albania, Croatia and Macedonia all have made formal requests for membership. Georgia also has requested a formal intensified dialogue that could lead to NATO membership. Ukraine already has begun an intensified dialogue.

A transcript of Fried’s interview is available on the State Department Web site.

For more information on U.S. policy, see Southeast Europe and International Security.

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)