NATO Plans

United States Ambassador to Georgia John Tefft is interviewed by RFE/RL [excerpt]:

Another critical April engagement is the NATO summit in Bucharest. Georgia,like Ukraine, had been hoping to earn a boost in its admission bid with a Membership Action Plan -- a goal that may have been derailed by the November crisis.

Tefft says there has been "no change" in U.S. support for Georgia getting a plan.

"I don't know as we speak what will happen at the Bucharest summit in April. There are lots of discussions going on, many of them took place this weekend in Munich at the [February 9-10] security conference there. We'll just have to see," he says. "But getting back and firmly on the democratic path is really a critical part of Georgia's establishing that it is in fact a good candidate to be a member of NATO and to contribute to NATO."