THE Cabinet has put to the National Assembly a formal proposal to ratify the North Atlantic Treaty.
The ratification will be one of the last steps on the long road to NATO membership. The MPs are to initiate the ratification once the protocols for the accession of the seven invitees are ratified by all NATO members. So far, the parliaments of 18 states have endorsed the protocols. The French senate will be the last one to do this.
Bulgaria will be a full-fledged NATO member by mid-March, Defence Minister Nikolay Svinarov said on Sunday. He took part in the fortieth international conference on security policy which started last Saturday in Munich. Svinarov said that he expected all seven ratifications of the NATO accession protocols would be submitted to the US state department by March 15.
Bulgaria and the other six countries that are about to join NATO are no longer discussed as invitees, but more as members of the Alliance, Svinarov said. He said that the protocol ceremony on the official accession of the country is due to be held on April 1 or 2.
Foreign Minister Solomon Passi also attended the forum in the Bavarian capital, along with 250 ministers and key players in the area of defence from more than 40 countries.
In a speech to the prestigious forum, Passi pointed to the importance of the co-operation between NATO and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is currently chaired by Bulgaria. Passi voiced hope that there would be soon a resolution to the issue concerning the Bulgarian medics in Libya.
In his capacity as chairman-in-office of the OSCE, Passi put forward an initiative for joint initiatives between NATO, OSCE and the Mediterranean countries.
"We need a dialogue between the Euro-Atlantic world, on the one hand, and on the other, the countries of the Middle East, the Mediterranean region and the Arab world. The EU, NATO and OSCE keep up individual dialogues with the Mediterranean countries, yet we deem these three organisations can unite their efforts and cast a bridge between the Euro-Atlantic zone and the Middle East. Such a bridge will inevitably improve the situation in the Middle East and will contribute for the faster resolution of the problems of that region," Passi said.
The future prospects ahead of NATO and trans-Atlantic partnership as a whole has been among the major subjects of discussion in Munich.
The conference, the fortieth of its kind, confirmed expectations that trans-Atlantic relations are finally heading towards normalisation and an end to the trans-Atlantic confrontation over the war in Iraq.
Passi held talks with US permanent representative to NATO Nicholas Burns, former US defence secretary William Cohen, and US senator John McCain.
On his return from Munich, Passi said that that there would be more clarity on the issue of US bases in Eastern Europe as early as the NATO summit in Istanbul in June.
In connection to the possible location of US military bases in Bulgaria, Svinarov said that expert visits were going on.
"We have been assured that the US state department, based on a report by the Pentagon, will come up with a decision by the beginning of March and it will be announced immediately so that in case there will be bases in Bulgaria we will be able to initiative concrete talks," Svinarov said.
The decision of the US state department will be containing concrete information as to the future location of the bases and the number of the servicemen in each of them.
It transpired at the Munich conference that Russia would probably not oppose the location of US military bases in Bulgaria. Russian defence minister Igor Ivanov called for more transparency particularly in connection with the restructuring of the NATO bases in Europe. Ivanov said that Russia would understand the need to station bases in Bulgaria and Romania as starting points for operation in the Middle East, yet "it is hard to explain how would possible bases in Poland and the Baltic states fight against terrorism," he said. He said Russia would insist that these structures allowed permanent monitoring teams from Russia.
The accession of seven new states to NATO will make the Alliance one of Russia's interests of vital importance, Ivanov told the conference. NATO's leadership should take into consideration Russia's interests in the political sphere and in regard to its security.