Vprašanja novinarjev
Nadja Podobnik (STA): Based on your visit in Slovenia, what do you
think Slovenia's priorities should be in the months before the Prague
summit?
Dr. Edgar Buckley: Well, I think this is largely a question of
keeping the effort going in all the areas that I mentioned. As I said
before, a lot of progress has been made. We need to keep it up.
Blaž Zgaga (Večer): Ali lahko podate skupno oceno pripravljenosti
Slovenije za vstop v NATO s šolsko oceno od ena do pet?
Dr. Edgar Buckley: A said earlier it's not an easy thing to make
all the necessary preparations to join NATO. If you talk to those
allies that have joined NATO most recently, the Czech Republic,
Hungary and Poland they will tell you that even now they haven't
completed the task of transformation. So, one needs to keep all this
work in perspective. It takes a long time, particularly in the defence
area these changes take a long time to introduce. But I don't think
anyone's expecting that by November each candidate country must be
perfectly ready to join NATO in December. It won't be like that. It's
a question of assessing the progress and seeing how ready a country is
in relation to the next few years.
Uroš Slak (TV Slovenija): Zanima me kako ocenjujete pripravljenost
oziroma potek profesionalizacije Slovenske vojske? Ali je program kot
ga je predstavilo Ministrstvo za obrambo - časovni razmik popolne
profesionalizacije Slovenske vojske - sprejemljiv za NATO, ali menite,
da bi bilo treba to popolno profesionalizacijo Slovenske vojske
narediti prej ?
Dr. Edgar Buckley: The key point for us when we look at any
country's defence plans is to assist the realism. If I may say so, all
the countries that NATO deals with, who were formerly within communist
regimes have had a weakness with this sort of planning. They tended to
have plans which were very nice to look at, but not very easy to
implement because they're not supported by proper resources, they are
not properly costed, they are not properly implemented. And I think I
could mention fifteen, sixteen, seventeen countries that had that
problem. Slovenia was no exception. What happened over the last year,
is the big effort to improve the realism of Slovenia's defence plans,
so the important point is - are they now realistic. We believe that
they are much more realistic than they were and you need to look at
professionalism to be in that context. It is not the question of
whether you would like professional army tomorrow, it's a question of
deriving a plan which would produce what you want. In this case,
professionalism, over a period of time. That's all I would say.
Dr. Dimitrij Rupel: Hvala lepa vsem skupaj.
Dr. Edgar Buckley: Thank you very much.
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