Joint press point

JAMES APPATHURAI (NATO Spokesman): Gentlemen, the Secretary General and the Prime Minister will each make opening statements and we'll have time for one question.

ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN (Secretary General of NATO): Good afternoon. It' really a great pleasure for me to welcome Prime Minister Orbán here at NATO Headquarters and I appreciate very much that he decided to visit NATO so soon after he took office. I have taken the opportunity to congratulate the Prime Minister on his election victory and I look very much forward to cooperating with the Prime Minister and his government.

Prime Minister, you know this building. You were here for the flag-raising ceremony in March 1999 when Hungary joined the Alliance. And I think that we can say with confidence that both NATO and Hungary have benefited enormously since that day.

And let me thank you for your personal commitment to the Alliance, and your country's important contributions to our operations in Afghanistan and Kosovo. Hungary is pulling its weight and NATO needs that.

I'm also grateful for Hungarian hosting of the C-17 aircrafts at the Papa Air Field. Those planes are a concrete demonstration of what we can do when allies pool together their resources. They are an example for NATO as a whole as we face the effects of the financial crisis and the requirement to reform.

Today we also discussed Afghanistan. We share the commitment to finish the job we started, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Hungary for your contribution at a time when money is tight.

We discussed Kosovo and Western Balkans as well. There are many encouraging signs in the region and they should continue. Kosovo is moving in the right direction despite last Sunday's events, and ultimately Euro-Atlantic integration for all countries in the Balkans must be the aim.

And finally, we discussed the future of NATO. We are looking forward to the approval of a new Strategic Concept at the upcoming NATO Summit in November. I will not prejudge the outcome of the negotiations on the Strategic Concept, but I can assure you that a core function for NATO will remain territorial defence of member nations and their populations.

However, we also have to realize that in order to protect our people effectively we need to adapt to the new security challenges of our century, like terrorism, cyber attacks, missile attacks, and we have to improve our capacity to counter these new threats.

VIKTOR ORBÁN (Prime Minister of Hungary): Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the chance being here and it really was a great impression to be back after 12 years. I do remember when the flags went up and Hungary and other Central European countries became member of NATO, so it was nice to recall our Alliance memories and good to have, in your capacity, an old Prime Minister anyway, from the end of the nineties and the beginning of this century.

So as you know, Hungary is a very much committed member of our Alliance. Hungary always considered NATO as a kind of embodiness of transatlantic cooperation and transatlantic cooperation in our understanding is a cornerstone of our security. All Europe, but especially in Central Europe, so we remain as committed as we were for membership in NATO.

At the same time we understand that NATO sometimes are involved into difficult missions, as the Afghanistan mission is. If NATO deserves our attention and our respect, sometimes must provide evidence that it's one of the most effective institutions of the world. Therefore, Afghanistan must be concluded in a successful way, so Hungary remains committed to the Afghanistan mission and we hope that whatever complications we have already over there finally we will find a way how to give the authority to the civilian forces and a future democratic Afghanistan government.

So we have to do it step-by-step, do you agree on that? And we hope that we will see some good developments in the forthcoming several months as well.

Hungary would remain part of the common thinking on the future security and collective defence strategy of NATO, so therefore we are very happy that the Article 5 will be more detailed in the future than it is now and we would like to cooperate to find the proper wording of this strategy in the forthcoming several months. And we are full of expectations, thinking on the forthcoming NATO Summit of the second part of this year, and we will be in full strength, present at that Summit of NATO.

So thank you very much, again. On behalf of the Hungarian people I would like to express how grateful we are that NATO is part of our security, because regardless what kind of difficulties we have in health care, education and financing the countries, security remains in our mind, especially in Central Europe, as the number one issue of the life. So we are happy to be member of NATO in the past and we are happy to be member of NATO now and in the future as well.

Thank you very much.

JAMES APPATHURAI: One question there.

Q: (Inaudible...)... Ukraine has recently totally given up ambitions to become a NATO member. My question is, to the Secretary General, do you intend to react to that officially and in some resolution that is changing the Bucharest Resolution.

And to the Hungarian Prime Minister, since Hungary is on the eastern part of NATO, located in that geographic area, how do you see the security situation east of the NATO borders?

ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN: First of all, the Bucharest decision still stands. We have no intention to change that decision. As you all know in Bucharest NATO stressed that our door remains open. We stressed that Ukraine, and by the way also Georgia, will become members of NATO, if they so wish and if they fulfil the next criteria.

Having said that, I also have to say, and it goes without saying actually, that NATO is a voluntary organization. It's for each individual country in Europe to decide its Alliance affiliation, which means that it's also for Ukraine to decide how its relationship with NATO should develop in the coming years.

I can inform you that next week the Ukrainian Defence Minister will participate in a NATO-Ukraine Commission meeting, so our cooperation with Ukraine will continue within the existing framework and then it's for Ukraine to decide how this relationship and partnership should develop in the coming years.

VIKTOR ORBÁN: So it's obvious that for Hungary our national interest is that our neighbours should or would or could belong to the same defence alliance as we are member, but it's not our decision. It's the decision of our neighbours. Taking into consideration that Ukrainians made their own options on this issue, instead of for convincing them to join NATO we have to have a good relationship, taking into consideration the given circumstances.

So we have a good relationship to the government in Kiev. That was the case back to ten years, so we have a good reason to continue the good neighbour relationship. We are very happy Ukraine is able to find the way to be involved into security operations of NATO as well, so we are very much supportive to the activity of the NATO-Ukraine Committee as well in the future.

This is our position. We think that the Ukrainian government now is a reliable government, is a law-based government and we hope that with this new government of Ukraine Hungary will have a good relationship in many fields; among them in security as well, in the future.

JAMES APPATHURAI: That's all we have time for. Thank you.