Nobody offered such considerable assistance in the form of consultancy, training and technical assistance to the National Army of Moldova as NATO, Deputy Minister of Defense Aurel Fondos said in a press club meeting entitled “Partnerships between NATO and the Republic of Moldova”, IPN reports.
The deputy minister stated that Moldova is a veteran in terms of participation in peacekeeping missions, namely in Iraq and Kosovo.
Despina Afentouli, program officer at the NATO Public Diplomacy Division, said that Moldova is present and active in many operations. “We expect the partnership will extend as a mutually beneficial exercise,” she said, underlining the partnership with NATO does not run counter to Moldova’s foreign policy course and complements the relationship with the EU.
Mihai Carp, vice director of the Crisis Management Section of the NATO Operations Division, said the decisions taken at the Wales NATO Summit of September 4-5 refer to the continuation of the policy to extend and intensify the partnerships, the Defense Capacity Building Initiative into which Moldova was accepted, adoption of a firms stance on Russia and its actions in Ukraine and to a series of concrete measures to support Ukraine as a NATO partner.
Political analyst Vasile Croitor said he does not expect a more pacifist behavior on the part of Russia, which can use some of the democratic instruments to change the internal situation in Moldova, profiting from the election campaign. Moldova is very vulnerable in terms of information security.
Director of the European Institute for Political Studies Viorel Cibotaru agreed, saying Moldova should follow the example of Ukraine and should ban foreign programs and stations that broadcast information undermining national security. “We do not need to adopt international treaties as such provisions are contained in the Broadcasting Code,” he stated. According to him, the country’s capacity to react to external challenges decreased as a result of the diminution of the costs for defense during over a decade. The analyst stressed the importance of Moldova’s partnership with NATO in the three key dimensions: human, procedural, and technical.
Moldova joined the NATO partnership for Pace in 1994, while in 2006 it signed the Individual Partnership Action Plan. On September 6, 2014, Moldova sent the second contingent of soldiers to Kosovo to replace the first contingent that returned home on September 10. According to the poll “Eurobarometer” of this spring, 30% of the Moldovans trust NATO, an increase of 4% compared with the previous survey.
