Estonia Supports Main Principles of NATO’s New Strategic Concept

Today the group of experts working on formulating the basis for a new Strategic Concept for NATO, led by former Secretary of State of the United States of America Madeleine Albright, presented its report on the results of its work to NATO.

Foreign Minister Urmas Paet stated that Estonia is satisfied with the content of the report that was presented to the North Atlantic Council and also released to the public at noon today. “The principles included in the report reflect, in Estonia’s opinion, essential priorities for ensuring the security of NATO member states,” Paet emphasised. “For Estonia it is important that the new Strategic Concept confirms the principle values of NATO and that collective defence is NATO’s primary responsibility, while also addressing contemporary security threats and ensuring the security of member states outside of NATO’s borders,” said Paet.

Foreign Minister Paet noted that Estonia plans to base its position on the principles named in the report during the negotiations for working out the NATO Strategic Concept.

Discussions on NATO’s new Strategic Concept between NATO and the expert group that created the report will continue at the beginning of June. The NATO Strategic Concept should be accepted at the next NATO summit, taking place in Lisbon in November of this year.

The expert group led by Madeleine Albright started working in September of 2009. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were represented in the expert group for formulating the Strategic Concept by one common representative. The Baltic representative in the expert group is current Latvian Foreign Minister Aivis Ronis.

The current NATO Strategic Concept was approved at NATO’s Washington summit in April of 1999.

Read more in the report published today: http://www.nato.int/strategic-concept/expertsreport.pdf

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