July 11, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 29, 1423

RIGA: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will present NATO with proof of almost 10 years’ worth of effort to achieve high military standards as they meet with representatives of the military alliance this weekend for the last time before the Prague expansion summit in November.

The three Baltic countries have had their eyes on NATO membership as far back as 1994, just three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when they established a military link to share the heavy costs of bringing their armies up to par with NATO’s high standards.

That was the beginning of “Baltdream,” Lithuanian defence official Povilas Malakauskas said.

That includes a Baltic battalion, Baltbat, and a naval team called Baltron. Then there is Baltnet, an air defence system that comprises a series of radars installed on the countries’ western border with Russia.

There is even a military school that trains soldiers to meet NATO standards — Baltdefcol, housed in the Estonian city of Tartu since its founding in 1998.

Now Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — with a total population of just eight million — are favoured to be the first former Soviet republics to join NATO and are expected to be invited to join its fold during November’s Prague summit.

But the Baltic institutions are not seen as merely a means to an end, and Estonian defence ministry spokesman Madis Mikkos insisted that cooperation between the three countries would only continue to grow if they became fellow NATO members.—AFP