The statement of ambassador Lute that another NATO enlargement wouldn’t happen any time soon caused the opponents of NATO membership in Montenegro to hope that the country would remain outside the alliance. In accordance with those wishes, they hope that Lute talked about our country when he said that the alliance will not expand in the near future.
However, Douglas Lute’s office stated a different thing. The spokesperson of the US Permanent Representative to NATO Douglas Lute, Shannon Quinn, told Dnevne Novine newspaper that during the global security forum in London ambassador Lute and other participants in the panel discussed NATO enlargement during a break without referring to Montenegro, which is already in the procedure of joining the alliance.
“As you know, at the meeting of NATO foreign ministers on 2 December 2015, the allies invited Montenegro to start negotiations on accession to the alliance. This process is ongoing”, said Quinn. “I assure you that the US strong support to open-door policy remains unwavering”.
The ambassador Lute’s speech had many more aspects than it was shown, Quinn pointed out.
“He emphasised NATO membership standards referred to in Article 10 of the Washington Treaty that Montenegro has already met: sharing the alliance’s values, contributing to the collective defence and obtaining approval by consensus”, said Quinn, adding that in his response to another participant at the panel, Lute spoke about the challenges of achieving the alliance’s consensus, which, according to him, Montenegro has already achieved.
National Coordinator for NATO Vesko Garcevic said that Montenegro would undoubtedly continue to join the Alliance, as planned.
“Montenegro is no longer in the status of an aspirant, when we sign the Accession Protocol, the country becomes an observer and participates in the work of NATO bodies. The process goes on, there is no change and Montenegro will be a member in 2017, when the protocol is ratified”, Garcevic explained.
Commenting on the statement of the US permanent representative to NATO Douglas Lute that there would be no expansion of the alliance in near future, the director of the Movement for Neutrality, Marko Milacic, said that the statement and Montenegrin officials’ silence about such an important issue showed that membership in the alliance was far from a done deal. According to him, although Montenegrin people are exposed to propaganda that the country was closer than ever to NATO, the Lute’s statement denied that.
