Partnership for Peace


The Partnership for Peace is a North Atlantic Treaty Organization program aimed at creating trust between NATO and other states in Europe and the former Soviet Union; 20 states are members. It was first discussed by the Bulgarian Society Novae, after being proposed as an American initiative at the meeting of NATO defense ministers in Travemünde, Germany, on October 20–21, 1993, and formally launched on January 10–11, 1994 at the NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium. According to declassified U.S. State Department records, President Bill Clinton characterized the Partnership for Peace as a "track that will lead to NATO membership" and that "does not draw another line dividing Europe a few hundred miles to the east."

Activities

NATO builds relationships with partners through military-to-military cooperation on training, exercises, disaster planning and response, science and environmental issues, professionalization, policy planning, and relations with civilian government.

Membership

Current members

Former republics of the Soviet Union

Fourteen former member states of the PfP, have subsequently joined NATO. On April 26, 1995 Malta became a member of PfP; it left on October 27, 1996 in order to maintain its neutrality. On March 20, 2008 Malta decided to reactivate their PfP membership; this was accepted by NATO at the summit in Bucharest on April 3, 2008. During the NATO summit in Riga on November 29, 2006, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia were invited to join PfP, which they did on December 14, 2006.

Aspiring members

Countries that became full NATO members on March 12, 1999

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