TIRANA, Nov. 19 – A senior NATO official visiting Albania last week made it clear that it was far from definite that Albania would be a invited to join NATO next year and the same applied for the two other contenders, Croatia and Macedonia.
“No decision has been reached yet by the allies on who is going to receive the membership invitation. We are still working on it,” Martin Erdman, NATO Assistant Secretary General, said in Skopje after meeting Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.
Erdman was leading a 20-member NATO delegation to Macedonia for a regular assessment of progress the country has made on its road to joining the alliance.
Erdman pointed out that joining NATO was a continuous process, and that the progress in the three countries was still being reviewed.
Albania, Croatia and Macedonia hope to receive invitations to join NATO at the alliance’s next spring summit in Bucharest. The three southeast European countries signed the Adriatic Charter with the United States in May 2003, to facilitate their entry into the alliance.
