Mar 28, 2008 (Romania Report & sources)
Romania’s President Basescu urges NATO to embrace Ukraine and Georgia, to develop cooperation with Russia at alliance summit – AP … Bucharest secured for NATO summit – REUTERS… Putin, Bush to discuss missile defense, CFE in Bucharest, Sochi -- RIA Novosti…
Romania’s President Basescu urges NATO to embrace Ukraine and Georgia, to develop cooperation with Russia at alliance summit
BUCHAREST: Romania's president on Thursday urged NATO to embrace closer ties with Ukraine and Georgia — a move that Moscow bitterly opposes.
The alliance is planning summit next week in Bucharest, where Georgia and Ukraine are hoping to be offered a "membership action plan" — which sets out the path to full membership.
Romanian President Traian Basescu dismissed the idea that offering the pre-membership plan to the two former Soviet republics should trouble Moscow.
"They are sovereign states which have opted for" their own solutions, Basescu told foreign journalists.
Basescu also called for NATO to develop cooperation with Russia, which he said plays a crucial role in regional security and in the global fight against terrorism.
Bucharest secured and beautified for NATO summit -- REUTERS
BUCHAREST - From sealing off streets to lining up snipers (…), Romania has beefed up security in the capital Bucharest for next week's NATO summit of world leaders – REUTERS reads.
The April 2-4 gathering is Romania's highest profile event ever. Hotels have been booked for the 3,000 delegates, including U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as some 3,500 journalists.
The real focus of the event's organizers has been ensuring the security of Romania's important guests, and that has been realized on a massive scale.
Fighter jets and warships are on standby in Romania and neighboring Bulgaria, both NATO's newest members. Authorities have brought in chemical and biological warfare experts, divers and thousands of additional personnel.
Police officers have already begun patrolling Bucharest's main arteries, many of them already cleared of parked cars and the city's usually log jammed traffic.
Some sectors of Bucharest plan to prohibit the sale of alcohol during the summit (…) and sewers sealed along official summit routes.
TAXING RESTRICTIONS
The gathering will be held in Bucharest's landmark Parliament Palace, the gargantuan product of megalomaniac dreams of communist-era dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, which now serves as the city's main tourist attraction.
On the summit's agenda are the alliance's tensions over its mission in Afghanistan and a potential deployment of additional troops there. Heads of NATO's 26 member states may also agree on further enlargement to include Croatia, Macedonia and Albania.
For the capital's 2 million inhabitants, the summit is already taxing as restrictions have concentrated traffic in Bucharest's outer areas. With more than 9,000 inhabitants per square kilometer, Bucharest is one of Europe's most crowded and polluted cities. Nearly 1 million cars are trapped daily in sooty traffic along main boulevards (…).
Putin, Bush to discuss missile defense, CFE in Bucharest, Sochi -- RIA Novosti
MOSCOW - The Russian and U.S. leaders will discuss European missile shield plans and the CFE arms reduction treaty when they meet in Romania and Sochi early next month, the Russian foreign minister said. George W. Bush accepted Vladimir Putin's invitation to visit his holiday residence in Sochi on April 6 after the April 2-4 NATO summit in Romania "to discuss the strategic agreement, a crucial part of which is missile defense."
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