“Neutrality is not Our Choice”. What Philip and the Head of the NATO PA Talked about.

Moldova wants a quite close cooperation with NATO, wants to share experiences and participate in international military maneuvers, said Prime Minister Pavel Filip during the meeting with the head of NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Rasa Juknevičienė, who arrived in Chisinau. “Neutrality is not our choice. It was imposed on us because of the intervention of Russian troops in the conflict on the Dniester”, said the head of the Council of Ministers. „The fact that Moldova, under its Constitution, is a neutral country does not mean that we want to be an isolated country. We want a quite close cooperation with NATO; we want to learn, we want to train our servicemen. The neutrality was imposed by the involvement of the Russian military forces in the conflict on the Dniester, which, unfortunately, have not left the territory of Moldova so far, despite the repeated appeals of our country and the international community”, stressed Filip. Rasa Juknevičienė noted that NATO can put at Moldova’s disposal the needed expertise and experience to cope with the new risks and challenges from the region. “NATO is not a military alliance, it is a peaceful alliance, an alliance for democracy”, she added. Source: Newsmaker