NATO Rejects Montenegro Membership in 2014

NATO secretary-general Andres Fogh Rasmussen announced after ministerial meetings in Brussels on Wednesday that Montenegro would not be invited to join at a summit in September.

“On Montenegro, we will open intensified and focused talks, and we will assess at the latest by the end of 2015 whether to invite Montenegro to join the alliance,” Rasmussen said.

He said that Montenegro, like three other membership hopefuls, Macedonia, Ukraine and Georgia, still had work to do before being granted membership of the Western military alliance.

But he stressed that NATO maintained its ‘open door’ policy despite strong Russian opposition to the alliance's further expansion into the former Communist east.

“Let me be clear: NATO’s door remains open. And no third country has a veto over NATO enlargement,” he said.

Podgorica has pushed to join the alliance after it split from Serbia in 2006. It was given a Membership Action Plan in 2009, which is regarded as a final step before joining.

Despite the apparent success of its security reforms, public support in Montenegro for NATO membership remains low, according to opinion polls.

Prime Minister Milo Dukanovic’s government claims 46 per cent of Montenegrins support membership, but opposition parties and NGOs believe that figure is much lower, around 35 per cent.