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Joining the NATO is a guarantee of Montenegrin borders – forever

“Current political debate in Montenego is a bit disturbing, but so is the one in United States. You’re not the only country with “dirty” politics. My old boss Joseph Biden, who is the vice president of the USA now, used to say that it’s one thing to criticize someone’s politics, but another thing to criticize their motives. I think that in both of our countries the motives are being criticized, which ispoisonous”, said Haltzel. 

Protocol for accession of Montenegro to NATO will be signed in Brussels today. How important is this for Montenegro, the region and the Alliance?

HALTZEL: Future of Montenegro should be the membership in NATO and European Union, where it belongs culturally and strategically. If the question is what is the alternative, we can say that it is neutrality. I currently live in Finland, which is a neutral country. Both Finland and Sweden have close cooperation with NATO, and especially with USA. If you’re a member of NATO that has positive effects on direct foreign investments. There is another thing of key importance – guarantee of the country’s borders forever. 

 

Montenegro is celebrating ten years of its independence. How would you rate our development in previous decade? 

HALTZEL: I think that Montenegro is a very successful story. No country is perfect, there are challenges to overcome such as organized crime, corruption… Every country is facing these challenges and you’re working on this. When you observe how the country looked like 10 or 20 years ago and see it now, I thing the rpogress is excellent. 

 

Besides being on the verge of joining NATO, Montenegro si deep into process of joining European Union. Do you believe in process of EU expansion considering many challenges?

HALTZEL: My president was recently in Great Britain and gave them friendly advice, which was immediately criticized as telling them what to do. We’re not an EU member, but we strongly support it and we hope the door for expansion will remain open. 

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