Ukraine will remain NATO's reliable partner

KYIV, December 4 /UKRINFORM/. After the presidential elections, Ukraine will remain a reliable and consistent partner of the North Atlantic Alliance, Foreign Minister Petro Poroshenko said during the Ukraine - NATO Commission meeting in Brussels Thursday.
In his words, this year was of a particular importance for relations between the Alliance and Ukraine, because NATO foreign ministers decided last December to open a new format of bilateral relations. Thanks to this decision, Ukraine launched the development of her annual target plan, and certain results of this work have been already summed up. “Implementation of the 2009 target program conformed to expectations of the Alliance. And we want to thank you for this. This result is also satisfactory to us. The annual target plan helped step up reforms in the military and civil areas, make relations with the Alliance more intensive,” Poroshenko said. He pointed out that the decision of the Bucharest summit and the following decisions by the NATO foreign ministers' meeting on Ukraine's future membership were correct and profitable for relations between NATO and Ukraine. On December 12 the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine decided to triple the strength of the Ukrainian peacekeeping contingent in Afghanistan.