NATO foreign ministers invited tiny Montenegro on
Wednesday to join their military alliance in its first expansion since 2009,
defying Russian warnings that enlargement of the U.S.-led bloc further into the
Balkans would be a provocation.
In a scripted session
at NATO's headquarters in Brussels, Montenegro's Foreign Minister Igor Luksic
strode into the imposing conference hall to loud applause from his peers as
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg declared: "This is the beginning of a very
beautiful alliance."
Stoltenberg said
inviting Montenegro had nothing to do with Russia. But NATO diplomats have said
the decision sends a message to Moscow that it does not have a veto on NATO's
eastwards expansion, even if Georgia's membership bid has been complicated by its
2008 war with Russia.
Moscow opposes any
NATO extension to former communist areas of eastern and southeastern Europe,
part of an east-west struggle for influence over former Soviet satellites that
is at the centre of the crisis in Ukraine.
Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov said last September that any expansion of NATO was
"a mistake, even a provocation". In comments to Russian media then,
he described NATO's so-called open door policy as "irresponsible".
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