NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg and President Klaus Iohannis have assured in Bucharest during the conference after the NATO PA meeting in Bucharest that the Deveselu missile shield is on schedule and had the necessary financing. Their statements come after the media reported that the US Senate had cut an article stipulating the acceleration of new capabilities installation to the missile system from the draft budget.
According to Stoltenberg, the missile defence system is moving ahead as planned, with the US discussing additional capacities, besides the already decided ones, which are currently enforced.
“We have inaugurated the site in Deveselu, which is extremely important for the entire Alliance and to continue to consolidate our ballistic defence, we’ll build a similar facility in Poland, which will become functional as of 2019,” NATO Secretary General announced.
We are now working on the second facility, meaning we stick to the plan, while NATO remains committed in this field, including in Romania, Stoltenberg added.
In his turn, the Romanian President explained that the information reported by the media had been misunderstood, while stressing that the Deveselu programme is moving ahead according to the plan. Iohannis said that the essence of the programme was scheduled, is financed and is moving ahead.
“There have been members of the various armed forces that wanted to discuss if an additional defence is needed to the site in Deveselu. Or, this matter should be studied better, for such systems, which are not part of the hard core of the defence unit can raise new fears, if are not well prepared and communicated (…) And the decision recently taken in the USA was about not doing something at high speed, before being closely studied. The conclusion is: the programme in Deveselu is working and moving ahead as scheduled. No one needs to panic. The situation in Deveselu is excellent,” Klaus Iohannis stated.