As part of his plan to visit all NATO allies, Secretary General of the Alliance Jens Stoltenberg paid a visit to Bulgaria this week. A meeting of this level cannot be insignificant and this was confirmed by the content of the talks. In Sofia Stoltenberg announced that NATO will be deploying additional forces to Bulgaria. There will be a control center within the Readiness Action Plan of the Alliance, in which Bulgarian military and NATO contingents will serve. Similar centers will be created in the Baltic countries, as well as in Poland and Romania, with their task being providing connection between the national forces and those of NATO. According to Stoltenberg, these centers are needed because of challenges such as terrorism coming from Iraq and Syria, violence in North Africa and challenges to the East, associated with the aggressive behavior of Russia towards neighboring countries. For months Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev has also been calling for increased NATO presence in this country. Similar discussions were held in Sofia during the recent visits of British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and US Secretary of State John Kerry. Both before and after those visits, similar issues were topics of discussion during meetings of EU Counter-terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove with senior Bulgarian officials in Sofia and Brussels. A series of such high-level talks characterized with great intensity suggests that because of its geopolitical location Bulgaria has acquired new dimensions in the plans of the Euro-Atlantic partners. Or, as Jens Stoltenberg put it - Bulgaria has become a key ally in a very sensitive region. The opinions in Iraq, Syria, North Africa and Russia are yet to be heard. John Kerry, however, found it necessary to recall in Sofia that Article 5 of the Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack against one member state is considered an attack against all of them, remained in full force. Also in an interview with a Bulgarian newspaper Jens Stoltenberg vowed that Bulgaria was safe and NATO would be where it needed it.
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