There is no other way to the EU than through NATO, expert says

The North Atlantic integration is a European integration project. There is no other way to the European Union than through NATO, at least there wasn’t any until present, says Dan Dungaciu, senor researcher at the Institute of Political Science and International Relations of the Romanian Academy. During a roundtable meeting at the Chisinau-based NATO Information and Documentation Centre, Dungaciu said that such countries as Moldova, which do not aim to join NATO, should ask themselves what will replace the support that NATO offers to the Eastern states in the areas of security, political reformation, change of leaders, economic investments etc. “If these questions are not brought up, there will be only rhetoric and the lesson of the neighbours will not be learned,” the experts said According to Dan Dungaciu, the accession to NATO is a political decision. Even if the Moldovan authorities speak about this, the partnership between Moldova and NATO is a vague blueprint, the expert said. He specified that the non-military, political, economic, civil and legal security-related cooperation with NATO can be a common point of the countries of the region - Georgia and Ukraine, which want to join NATO, and Moldova and Russia, which do not have the accession to NATO in view. Andrei Popov, executive director of the Foreign Policy Association, said that the political circle in Moldova does not have the right to base its key political option on the results of the current opinion polls as it was demonstrated that the public opinion in the country is floating and can be easily influenced. He underlined that the NATO Information and Documentation Centre plays an important role in ensuring public debates that should involve relevant players and should enable to crystallise the people’s thoughts. Romanian Ambassador to Moldova Filip Teodorescu also stressed the importance the NATO Information and Documentation Centre, saying that its inauguration was among the priorities of the Romanian diplomatic mission, which plays the role of a NATO contact point embassy in Moldova. The NATO Information and Documentation Centre in Moldova is a nongovernmental institution that aims to promote the Euro-Atlantic values and standards to the benefit of the people, to support the cooperation between Moldova and NATO, to implement the objectives and activities stipulated in the Moldova – NATO cooperation mechanisms and to inform the people about international security in general and NATO in particular. According to the Public Opinion Barometer for November 2007, if a referendum was held next Sunday, only 23.4% of the respondents would vote for joining NATO. The NATO supporters in the previous surveys made up between 26% and 37%.