Montenegro dichter bij NAVO-lidmaatschap (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Nato ministers on Friday offered Montenegro a formal plan to join the alliance, just days after the EU announced it would lift visas for its citizens.
"With a sustained effort at further reform, today's invitation to join the Membership Action Plan (MAP) will be a stepping stone to the ultimate goal: full membership in Nato," the secretary-general of the military alliance, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a press conference in Brussels.
He added that Bosnia and Herzegovina, for which a similar request was rejected, will get the plan once it has achieved the "necessary progress in its reform efforts."
The move for Montenegro comes just a little over three years since it declared independence from Serbia, much faster than older candidates Georgia and Ukraine, who had also applied for MAP.
The former Yougoslav republic of 650,000 people had to "start its army from scratch", but did not meet opposition from any Nato member or from Russia, as was the case with Georgia and Ukraine.
Russia's two neighbours have been granted another form of intensified co-operation with Nato, the so-called commissions, which their backers present as MAP without the actual name.
In addition it remains unclear whether Kiev and Tbilisi will have to formally have a membership action plan, a step created to introduce some rigour into the membership preparation stage.
Ukrainian foreign minister Petro Poroshenko, for his part, presented a relaxed front on Montenegro becoming a Nato member ahead of his country.
"If Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina have the intention of providing their country security in the form of Euro-Atlantic integration, we can only welcome this decision," he told journalists at a press conference after meeting with Nato ministers on Thursday.
But he pointed out that the period before joining MAP was "unexpectedly short" for Montenegro and that "nobody raised flags against it."
One of the reasons picked up by France and Germany for opposing MAP for Ukraine was low public support for Nato accession. But in Montenegro's case, it was not seen as a factor that most people there also oppose the military alliance, as they still remember the Nato bombing of Serbia. Polls conducted in October show Montenegrin support for Nato membership at 35 percent.
The Ukrainian foreign minister did not want to comment on what he called 'double standards'. Instead, he played down the importance of the plan, which he called a "bureaucratic formality", and noted that a lot of countries became Nato members without it.
Before, 1999 when MAP was created, membership did not depend on fulfilling this step.
For Montenegro, the plan does not mean automatic membership as the government in Podgorica still has a number of outstanding reforms ahead. New Nato member Albania, for instance, spent 10 years in the MAP stage before joining earlier this year.
Cosmetic reforms
Back in Podgorica, the Nato move, also connected with the recent lifting of EU visas for its citizens, is likely to boost the image of the government.
But voices in the civil society warn that this will not mean an acceleration of democratic reforms, which so far are seen as being mostly on paper.
Momcilo Radulovic from the European Movement, a Podgorica-based NGO, says there is still need for more transparency, good governance, and a stronger fight against organised crime and corruption. He was sceptical that Nato alone could push for these reforms.
"They are only interested in reforming the military and security structures. But once we get EU candidate status, maybe at the end of 2010 or early 2011, there will be more pressure on the government," he told this website.
Daliborka Uljarevic from the Centre for Civic Education, another Montenegrin NGO, agrees that much work is still needed to implement reforms.
The fight against corruption "is not improving, but the government has found a way to portray it that way by excessive use of statistics," she said.
Prosecutors and police report dozens of small drug dealers arrests, but none of the big drug rings lords has ever been apprehended in Montenegro, despite the fact that it figures prominently as a transit country in a Europol report published last month.
Her remarks were echoed by Vessela Tcherneva, a Sofia-based expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations. "Montenegro is a safe haven for dubious Russian investments, smuggling and corruption, but if we don't give them the option to go the other way, they won't improve," Ms Tcherneva said.
She noted that it will likely take the country another four to eight years to become Nato member, which would probably take place together with Bosnia and Herzegovina.