The 2008 Bucharest Summit or the 20th NATO Summit was a NATO summit organized in Bucharest, Romania on 2 – 4 April 2008. Among other business, Croatia and Albania were invited to join the alliance. Republic of Macedonia was not invited due to its ongoing naming dispute with Greece. Georgia and Ukraine had hoped to join the NATO Membership Action Plan, but the NATO members decided to review their request in December 2008.
The fear that NATO is evolving into a worldwide coalition of the willing, as such increasing polarisation and militarization in international affairs, sparked protests at NATO's HQ in Brussels two weeks before the summit, and in Bucharest. Protesters targeted the renewed determination of NATO to use nuclear weapons and NATO's backing of the US anti-missile shield.
Read more about 2008 Bucharest Summit: Summit Agenda, Host, Non-invitation, NATO-Russia Meeting, After The Summit
Famous quotes containing the words bucharest and/or summit:
“I had such a wonderful feeling last night, walking beneath the dark sky while cannon boomed on my right and guns on my left ... the feeling that I could change the world only by being there.”
—Viorica Butnariu, Rumanian student at Bucharest University. letter, Dec. 23, 1989, to American friend. Observer (London, Dec. 31, 1989)
“The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there. Simple races, as savages, do not climb mountains,—their tops are sacred and mysterious tracts never visited by them. Pomola is always angry with those who climb the summit of Ktaadn.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)