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Bucharest: Nato leaders on Thursday promised Ukraine and Georgia they would "one day" join the Western defence alliance after rejecting US demands to put the former Soviet republics immediately on a path to membership.
Germany, France and some smaller Nato states rejected pressure at an alliance summit to offer the two countries a Membership Action Plan (MAP), the first step towards membership, saying neither was ready and such a move would risk provoking Russia.
But Nato leaders softened the blow by making a vague pledge to invite the two nations to join the alliance at some point in the future and saying former Cold War foe Moscow should have no influence on membership decisions.
"We agreed today that these countries will become members of Nato," Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato secretary general, told reporters reading from a communique agreed at the summit of the pact's 26 leaders in Bucharest.
"That is quite something," he added.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly argued that the two countries could not be accepted into Nato because of people's opposition in Ukraine and Georgia's involvement in regional conflicts.
'Too early'
"We are convinced that it is too early to grant both states the pre-membership status," Merkel said as she arrived in Bucharest.
Berlin and Paris believe that neither country is stable enough to join Nato and that extending them membership will unnecessarily offend Russia, which has vehemently opposed Nato's eastward expansion.
"We are opposed to the entry of Georgia and Ukraine because we think it is not the right response to the balance of power in Europe and between Europe and Russia, and we want to have a dialogue on this subject with Russia," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Tuesday. But Bush, who two days earlier promised in Kiev that he would "work as hard as I can to see to it that Ukraine and Georgia are accepted into Membership Action Plan [MAP]", pleaded one more time publicly for the admission of the two countries.
"Welcoming them into the Membership Action Plan would send a signal to their citizens that if they continue on the path to democracy and reform they will be welcomed into the institutions of Europe. It would send a signal throughout the region that these two nations are, and will remain, sovereign and independent states," he said.
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