NATO underlines southern partnership with MENA countries

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stressed Thursday the importance of promoting the partnership with southern countries, particularly Middle East and North Africa. Stoltenberg made the remark at a press conference after receiving a report from experts on the situation in the southern neighbourhood and NATO's relationship with atheist activity in the MENA region. The report was made last October by established group of independent experts "to provide advice to NATO on how we, in an even better way, can address both the challenges we see in our southern neighbourhood, but also the opportunities". The NATO chief confirmed that the fields of this cooperation are about terrorism, instability, but it's also about the value of the opportunities in working with partners in our southern neighbourhood in North Africa or the Middle East. "There are different proposals there about how we can work more closely with partners in the the region. We have close partnerships in countries like Jordan, Tunisia, with Mo ntenegro. We also have, of course, some presence in the Middle East," he said. "We have a mission in Iraq. So we speak about many different countries, different challenges, different opportunities," he noted. "But of course, that matters for the alliance, and therefore I'm looking forward to the discussion that will now take place based on the report, and then hopefully to see some ambitious conclusions being made by the Associated Government when they meet in Washington in July," he added. Source: Kuwait News Agency