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| Nato seeks end to split over Georgia, Ukraine |
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Wednesday, December 03, 2008
BRUSSELS: Nato foreign ministers will endeavour on Tuesday to overcome divisions about the best strategy for dealing with Russia and just how far to open the door to former Soviet Georgia and Ukraine.
The ministers, meeting almost four months after Russia’s war with Georgia, appear certain to back away from offering the two hopefuls a fast-track to join the world’s biggest military alliance, despite intense US lobbying.
“Nobody has been suggesting that either country would be ready for full Nato membership tomorrow. They would both need to pursue significant reforms,” chief spokesman James Appathurai underlined on Monday.
But Germany and France lead a bloc of half a dozen European allies taking an increasingly tougher line against their entry, and are wary of a recent change in US tactics to promote their candidacies.
While Washington concedes the two are not ready to join, it has been seeking a way to sidestep Nato’s membership action plan (MAP) process, which has been seen as the penultimate step for candidates before entry.
A key factor is relations with Russia, which deteriorated badly after the war but are now steadily improving, and the ministers will also discuss whether high-level meetings with Moscow frozen over the conflict can resume.
The Europeans are particularly keen to foster better ties with Moscow, given its energy might and cooperation with Nato in the fight against terrorism, and Washington may be ready to smooth ties in exchange for progress.
“In principle, I have no problem with Nato-Russia Council activities,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said overnight, ahead of her last Nato meeting.
n the eve of the talks, over two days at Nato headquarters in Brussels, ambassadors were unable to agree on the best way to characterise the future of relations with Georgia and Ukraine, diplomats said. After two weeks of wrangling and some 18 draft tests, the 26 allied nations still disagreed over the formula to use and “there is a strong chance” that the ministers will have to thrash out a deal themselves, one diplomat said.
Germany insists that Georgia and Ukraine should not be given “any shortcut to membership”, which would allow them to “sidestep the MAP”, he said.
MAP has been the mechanism of choice for joining NATO since 1999, but it has not been strictly defined as a condition for accession, and diplomats have been at pains to point out that other methods exist. In Bucharest in April, NATO leaders rejected granting the two former Soviet states MAP status, but the leaders did vow that the two had a future in the alliance.
Around half a dozen European countries opposed this, believing that MAP now would be a red rag to Russia, which vehemently opposes their candidacies amid concern that NATO is closing in on its borders. Georgia and Ukraine are far from fulfilling NATO’s other membership criteria, which include political, democratic and military standards and good relations with their neighbours, as well as public support for joining.
The leaders tasked the foreign ministers with making a first assessment of progress. The United States has been looking for another forum in which to move the reform process forward for the two hopefuls, and it believes that the Nato-Georgia and NATO-Ukraine commissions would be best to advance reform.
One European NATO diplomat described the commissions as “very useful vehicles for taking this forward”. However, other European allies, particularly Germany, insist that the MAP process must not be by-passed.
“A great many countries think that Georgia and Ukraine have not made enough progress to even be considered for the membership action plan,” a German government spokesman insisted Monday. While he said that Russia should have no veto over their hopes, he did note NATO’s pledge in April that the accession of new members “would indeed be coordinated with Russia”.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
