President Lennart Meri met Admiral Guido Venturoni, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, in Kadriorg yesterday. The meeting focused on NATO enlargement and Estonia's achieving co-operative capability with NATO.

Accession to the European Union and NATO are Estonia's two goals, and President Meri told Admiral Venturoni that the number of NATO accession supporters is increasing in Estonia, also among young people of Russian nationality. The President also said that Estonia is building up small but loyal defence forces, that we have actively participated in the Partnership for Peace programmes and used the experience gained on the missions for training our officers. As the President said, the Estonian Parliament has a consensus concerning the increase of defence expenditure to 2 per cent of our GDP by the year 2002.

As Admiral Venturoni said, the political aspect of NATO enlargement is important, but neither can the military-technical side of building up the defence forces be underestimated, as the defence forces must be capable of co-operation in order to join the Alliance. As the Admiral said, Estonia is doing her homework in a serious and dedicated manner, and there is no examination to be taken for NATO membership, achieving co-operative capability with NATO is a constant process.

President Meri thanked NATO for their support and readiness for co-operation. In Estonia we are well aware of our advantages and disadvantages, we have learned to assess ourselves realistically.


Press Service of the Office of the President
Kadriorg, June 29, 2000

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