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President Iohannis welcomes NATO Secretary General
President Klaus Iohannis welcomed NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to the Cotroceni Presidential Palace on Thursday, mentioning that this is an important day as the missile defence shield at Deveselu will be activated.
"It is a very important day to us all. It is the day when the Deveselu [ballistic missile defence shield] is inaugurated and, moreover, I am glad that we have met and we can thoroughly discuss our common projects, particularly the upcoming [NATO] summit in Warsaw. I am positive we shall find common points of view," Iohannis said at the beginning of the meeting.
NATO's Secretary General said it is a great honour for him to come back to Romania.
President Klaus Iohannis said Thursday that Romania is concerned with the situation in Ukraine and Romania, adding that political instead of military solutions are the viable solutions.
"Romania will continue to be a security provider in its geographical region, a pole of stability at the eastern end of the Euro-Atlantic space, which is subjected to challenges and threats. From this point of view, Romania is concerned about the situation in Ukraine and Moldova. The only viable solutions are political, not military. That is a problem of shared interest to NATO and the European Union and more reason for consolidating the strategic partnership between the two organisations," Iohannis told a joint news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
He added that the situation in NATO's eastern neighbourhood continues to be volatile and the resolution of the Ukrainian file is difficult amidst a partial and deficient implementation of the Minsk II Accord.
He said the perpetration of crisis in Syria and instability in the Middle East and Norther Africa have favoured the ISIL/Daesh expansion to Europe.
"The NATO summit in Warsaw will be a key moment in the history of NATO and essential to the continuation of NATO's adaptation to consolidate collective security and defence after the implementation of the action plan to increase NATO's operational capabilities, agreed upon at the 2014 NATO summit in Wales," said Iohannis.
He told Stoltenberg that Romania continues its support for NATO's open-door policy and actual results in relation to Montenegro as well as other NATO aspiring members.
"About Moldova, we hailed NATO's approaches for the consolidation of the defence capabilities. I reaffirmed Romania's support for Ukraine, including the NATO-Ukraine Cyber Defence Trust Fund, of which Romania is a lead nation. I believe support for the eastern partners should enjoy increased attention on the NATO agenda, because their security will reflect on the Euro-Atlantic security environment as well," said Iohannis.
President Klaus Iohannis on Thursday said that given Russia's actions, there will be an advanced presence of NATO on NATO's eastern flank.
"These actions, which are announced and prepared in Russia, are some of the reasons making us ask NATO for a balanced approach of its eastern flank, when we talk about the northern part, where we have Poland and the Baltic states, and the southern part, where we have Romania and Bulgaria. This flank obviously needs a balanced approach, meaning that we shall have an advanced presence of NATO forces in the northern part of the eastern flank, but this is also necessary in the southern part of the eastern flank. This doesn't mean that we shall have, as we did in the Cold War, tens or hundreds of thousands of servicemen stationed on this flank; however, in our opinion, an advanced presence of NATO forces is needed, for instance through joint military exercises. We have many such exercises, we want more," Iohannis said about an announcement made by the Russian Federation that it was sending three additional brigades at the border with NATO.
The Romanian head of state mentioned it also suggested a standing naval force in the Black Sea.
"In the same logic, we want - and we proposed it - to have a standing naval presence in the Black Sea, which will definitely start with the riparians, meaning us, the Bulgarians and the Turks, but which in the long run can integrate in NATO's approach of the southern part of the eastern flank," said Iohannis.
President Klaus Iohannis welcomed NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to the Cotroceni Presidential Palace on Thursday. At the end of the meeting, the two officials held a joint news conference.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was in Romania for the activation on Thursday of the Aegis Ashore missile defence site at Deveselu.