Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday the Unites States would not insist on pushing NATO to offer Georgia and Ukraine the Membership Action Plan (MAP) status at the coming NATO foreign ministers meeting.
"We believe that the NATO-Georgia Commission and the NATO-Ukraine Commission can be the bodies with which we intensify our dialogue and our activities with Georgia and NATO," Rice told reporters, adding "there does not need at this point in time to be any discussion."
"Georgia and Ukraine are not ready for membership. That is very clear," Rice said.
The 26-member NATO postponed any decision in April on offering Georgia and Ukraine the MAP statue until the December foreign ministers meeting. Rice will travel to Brussels to participate in the meeting on December 2 and 3, which is expected to focus on coordinating NATO's stand on the tension between Georgia and Russia.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski said they were met with gunfire when they visited a Russian checkpoint near the South Ossetian boundary on Sunday. Russia denied the claim.
Russia sent in troops in August after Georgia launched a sudden attack to retake its breakaway region of South Ossetia. Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two weeks after defeating Georgia in the brief war.
"We do have the NATO-Georgia and the NATO-Ukraine Commissions. Intensifying our work within them, intensifying our contacts within them, is, we believe, a good alternative and will send a very strong signal that while these countries are not ready for membership and still have many, many standards that they would have to meet, that we will remain true to the Bucharest Deceleration that they will at some point in the future be members of NATO," Rice said.
The so-called MAP is a NATO program of advice, assistance and practical support tailored to the individual needs of countries wishing to join the alliance. At present, Albania, Croatia and Macedonia are MAP members.
Participation in the MAP does not prejudge any decision by NATO on future membership, but is viewed as a royal road to the alliance.
The Bush administration has been supporting Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO, some NATO members, such as France and Germany, worry about the move would provoke Russia led by Vladimir Putin and his successor Dmitry Medvedev.
NATO has already expanded eastward, incorporating former Warsaw Pact countries, including Poland and Hungary. Russia has expressed strong objections to letting either Ukraine or Georgia join the alliance. Both were major components of the former Soviet Union.
Source:Xinhua
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