North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NATO demanded March 11 that the OSCE be given full access to verify the withdrawal of heavy weapons in eastern Ukraine and called again on Russia to end support for the separatists.
      

NATO officials on "EU army," Kiev's "peacekeepers" idea

MONS -- NATO leaders have reacted with restraint to the proposal of EC President Jean-Claude Juncker to create the army of the European Union.

Russia announced Wednesday it would stop its participation in the Joint Consultative Group and in particular of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

Yordan Bakalov, a former interim Interior Minister, is Prime Minister Boyko Borisov's proposal to take over the Defense Information Service, media sources say.

Attending on Tuesday the meeting for the review of the 2014 activity report of the Ministry of National Defence, President Klaus Iohannis said that Romania needs to strengthen its "strategic credibility."

Photo credit: (c) ALEX MICSIK / AGERPRES STREAM

BELGRADE - Two multinational exercises with the Russian Armed Forces are planned for 2015 to improve the Serbian Armed Forces (VS) capabilities, spokesperson for the Serbian Defence Ministry and Figate Captain Jovan Krivokapic has told Tanjug.

"Land forces, Air Force and anti-air defence units will take part in the exercises, which will be held in Russia," Krivokapic explained.

The two NATO commands to open in Romania in 2016 will operate in Bucharest and will have a key-role in ensuring connections between the national and the Alliance's forces, accomplishing the command and control in the area where it is necessary to deploy a rapid reaction force, the minister of National Defence Mircea Dusa said on Tuesday at the 2014 annual report of the institution.

NATO's Black Sea members Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey joined four other alliance states in a multinational naval exercise on March 10 just across the water from the Crimean Peninsula annexed by Russia last year.
   

"Enough about Crimea - let's consider Kosovo, Libya, Iraq"

MOSCOW -- Russia's partners in the West should pay attention to NATO's 1999 bombing of Serbia, to Kosovo, and the breakup of Libya, "and not just to Crimea."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made this statement on Tuesday, TASS reported.

The analysis of the activity of the National Defence Ministry (MApN) in 2014 is marked firstly by the change of the security environment in the extended region of the Black Sea, as well as by the growth of instability in the Alliance's southern vicinity, in the Middle East towards Northern Africa, Defence minister Mircea Dusa said on Tuesday at the institution's stocktaking report meeting.