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President Iohannis: the NATO Summit was "the fair burden sharing"
The North Atlantic Alliance is the strongest alliance of all time, which withstood for more than 70 years, said on Thursday President Klaus Iohannis, who participated over the past days in the NATO high-level meeting, held in the UK. meeting .
"Firstly, NATO reached 70 years, a notable thing and I believe that it's truly important to underscore that this alliance, which is the strongest military alliance of all times, withstood very well for 70 years and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for good reason, at the reception on Downing Street 10, rhetorically asked himself what makes this alliance so strong and the natural response was the fact that all the member states are consolidated democracies, democracy and democratic values also make the NATO Alliance stronger and, as they say, resilient," the President said in a statement at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace.
Iohannis said that also discussed at the NATO Summit was "the fair burden sharing," as well as the future of the organization, adding that Romania achieved its objectives at this meeting.
"Firstly, this so-called burden sharing, meanwhile everybody understood and effectively accepted that everyone needs to pay more for Defence. Thus, that 2 percent will be reached by increasingly more allies. This thing has been quickly clarified and it hasn't led, contrary to the expectations of the public space, to any kind of controversy. Thus, I repeat, any kind of controversy" the President mentioned.
The head of state mentioned that everyone accepted that NATO needs a reflection process in order to identify a very good strategy for the future.
"The second matter which also led to breaking news and all sorts of speculations in the public space were the requests to assess the medium and long-term strategy for NATO, a matter which in a rather powerful form was requested at that time, a few weeks ago, by President Macron. This issue was discussed and no controversy arose here, on the contrary, we all accepted that NATO needs a refection process in order to identify a very good strategy for the future of NATO. We need to respond to questions like who is our enemy, where are the threats for NATO, how should NATO relate to the new world powers, for instance, how does NATO relate to China. Should or shouldn't we change the approach regarding Russia. This type of questions were asked and will undoubtedly lead to the drafting of an improved strategy," Iohannis added.
He said that the outer space will be part of NATO's concerns for allies' security.
"Finally, we all decided together to request the NATO Secretary General, Mr. Stoltenberg, to draft the guidelines of a reflection process, which will ultimately lead to a strategy, which, in its turn, will be discussed. These issues have been widely speculated and, at the end of yesterday's meeting, I can say that: 1) NATO celebrated 70 years; 2) NATO is united; 3) NATO is strong and NATO has a very good future. I would like to highlight a few specific aspects. One may be surprising, perhaps not, but we have decided together that outer space will be part of NATO's concerns for allies' security. It is obviously a new part for NATO," the head of state explained.
The President also underscore that he brought to attention some matters related to the Black Sea area and the intervention plans for the Easter Flank.
"All these, obviously, of great interest to us and, as such, I believe that this NATO Summit hasn't been only a success for the alliance, for NATO, but this Summit has been a success for us, for Romania and we achieved the objectives we went there with," Iohannis concluded.