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Russia: Response by Russian MFA Spokesman Andrei Nesterenko to a Media Question Concerning the Signing of the NATO Accession Protocols for Albania and Croatia

Question: It has become known that Albania and Croatia signed the NATO accession protocols at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on July 9, 2008. Could you comment on Russia's stand on this question?

Answer: Our attitude to the NATO expansion regardless of its geographical vector remains invariable: in the conditions of the absence of an external military threat and because of the alliance's incomplete transformation it is not an adequate reaction to contemporary challenges and reinforces the security of neither the new members nor NATO nor Europe as a whole.

We are convinced that the changed nature of the new security threats and risks – international terrorism, organized crime, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and drug trafficking – demands a uniting of comprehensives efforts by all states and international organizations. Whereas the alliance's expansion does not strengthen the collective approach, but, on the contrary, leads to a fragmentation of the common security space in Europe.

Besides, the admission to NATO of new members devaluates the key principle underlying the concept of indivisible security – not to build one's own security to the detriment of the security of others.

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