(Brussels) NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admitted Wednesday that the members of the alliance were divided on the question of Ukraine’s membership, which will be on the agenda of the Vilnius summit in July.
“On this question, there are different points of view within the alliance”, admitted Jens Stoltenberg during a speech before the German Marshall Fund in Brussels, recalling that “decision-making in NATO is made by consensus.
“I’m going to have a few telephone conversations during the day on the way forward and how to respond to Ukraine’s ambitions for NATO membership,” he said.
“No one is able to tell you exactly what the final decision will be at the Vilnius summit on this issue,” he said again.
The Americans and many other allies refuse to go further than the Bucharest declaration, several Alliance diplomats told AFP. During this summit, in 2008, the leaders had affirmed that Ukraine and Georgia “would become members of NATO”, without any indication of a timetable.
NATO membership would allow Ukraine to invoke the collective defense clause of the alliance’s Article 5, which obliges all allies to defend it in the event of an attack.
Discussions are underway to “build the foundations for a compromise on membership,” said one of the diplomats. One possibility could be to give security guarantees like those given to Sweden, whose membership is blocked by Turkey and Hungary.
“France is ready to agree agreements with Ukraine aimed at granting it security guarantees that will help it defend itself in the long term and prevent possible future aggressions,” said the spokeswoman for the Quai d’ Orsay.
But the term “guarantees” does not enjoy consensus within the Alliance, the diplomats said.
“The ultimate guarantee of security will be NATO membership, but that’s not something that will happen in the middle of a war,” Jens Stoltenberg stressed.