A NATO liaison office will be inaugurated in Chisinau next year, at the request of the Government of Moldova, Moldova’s Ambassador to NATO Mihai Gribincea announced in the program “Place for dialog” on Radio Moldova station, IPN reports.

Gribincea said that this office, which will play the role of a direct communication channel between the authorities of Moldova and NATO, represents a success of the political dialogue and the country’s wish to cooperate with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by keeping its status of neutrality. Through the agency of this office, NATO will inform itself from the first source about the events in Moldova and will be able to identify the needs to reform the defense and security sectors.

The diplomat also said that the process of opening the given office will last for several months, but the new government of Moldova can hasten it. “The negotiations on a memorandum of understanding with NATO reached the final stage and the document is to be signed in the near future. But this does not mean that Moldova renounced the neutrality status,” he stated.

Mihai Gribincea noted that Moldova’s neutrality status does not hamper the cooperation with NATO, while the European integration does not imply the entry into NATO. There are NATO member states that are not EU member states and vice versa. Anyway, the initial accession to NATO would have accelerated the European integration process because being a NATO member also implies reforms and modernization.