Sekerinska: We are doing all we can to join NATO, but it is not only up to us


“Each country must guarantee its security no matter what, and to become a NATO member it should vouch for its contributions to global stability. We are working on our national security as well as NATO membership,” Minister of Defense Radmila Sekerinska said Monday in a response to a question about Macedonia’s NATO prospects this year.

Minister Shekerinska spoke about the government’s expectations that the European Commission’s report in April would show that Macedonia had overcome its challenges on its course toward NATO.

“Our goal as government,” she said, “was to remove all doubts about whether Macedonia deserves to be a member of NATO and the EU. I am convinced we will achieve this.”

Minister Shekerinska added, however, that another prerequisite for our being invited to join NATO was solving the name dispute with Greece.

“We are doing all we can to come to a mutually satisfactory solution. We have clearly shown our readiness to resolve the issue this year, and not ten years from now,” Shekerinska said.

She said that our decisions were ours alone and not enough to find a solution. Still, she insisted that EU and NATO were truly interested in supporting the security of the region and all of Europe.