In his interview with German Bild, Montenegrin prime minister Dusko Markovic said that he did not perceive his notable encounter with the US president Donald Trump at NATO summit in Brussels as a “pushing” but as an harmless event.
“And I’d like to highlight: the President of the United States belongs next to the Secretary General. Before that, I had the opportunity to meet President Trump. We shook hands and I conveyed to him our gratitude for all the support of the United States for our Nato integration path. I received thousands of emails and messages from US citizens and from across Europe. They liked my reaction in that situation,” Markovic added.
America First™ — Trump moves aside a NATO leader to make his way to the front of the packpic.twitter.com/zIwkFU9zBI
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 25, 2017
According to him, he does not perceive NATO only as a military alliance, but as an alliance of the most progressive countries in the world.
“Our military potential is modest, but despite that, we were able to deploy our mission to Afghanistan and elsewhere in order to help maintaining peace and stability. Our country is the smallest country in the Balkans. But it has an important role. It has shown its ability to preserve its own stability at the hardest times following the dissolution of former Yugoslavia and embark simultaneously on the path of European and NATO integration,” Markovic said.
Commenting on Russia, the PM said that it did everything that was within its power – politically, financially, in terms of intelligence services – to prevent Montenegro’s accession to NATO.
“The ultimate goal was to carry out a terrorist act – a coup – to deter Montenegro and to overtake power in a violent manner. But as you can see, we managed to get out of all of this. Russia must stop interfering and meddling in the political systems of foreign states. It must give up on interfering into domestic Montenegrin issues. It is not supposed to interpret the will and orientation of citizens of Montenegro. This is not something that is done by democratic and friendly countries. That is a characteristic of non-democratic systems,” Markovic said.
Asked why Montenegro wants to join the EU having in mind that the UK voted for Brexit and that many states in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe are eurosceptic, Markovic said Montenegro believed in the vision of the European Union.
“The European Union will gain a lot from Montenegro, we have an enormous economic and social potential. On 29 June, we are going to mark the fifth anniversary of our accession negotiations. That’s why we want to make the best use of the next five years in order to become a fully-fledged EU member. I am also going to say that at the meeting with your Chancellor in Trieste on 12 July. Montenegro went furthest among all the countries of the region, and it will take them many years to reach our current level of negotiations. It is of tremendous importance for the Balkans that the enlargement policy be active,” the PM concluded.
