Former Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Richard G. Lugar today called for NATO countries to offer membership to the Republic of Macedonia. In the Senate, Lugar was a chief Congressional architect of NATO expansion and realignment.
“Macedonia is a friend and partner of the United States and is already contributing forces to serve alongside our own,” Lugar said. “Diplomatic wrangling that has so far kept Macedonia out of NATO was tiresome in peacetime, but it should not be tolerated in this time of crisis.”
Lugar today met with Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki as part of his work with the Lugar Institute for Diplomacy and Congress at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
“With Europe under threat from Russian military and economic aggression, NATO should assert itself, not retrench. The trans-Atlantic community is better prepared to answer Russian actions having expanded membership over the last twenty years, and it should continue to do so today,” Lugar said.
