PRAGUE, January 21. /TASS/. The issue of Kiev’s membership in NATO should be postponed for the sake of peace talks, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said.
"Peace talks must be based first of all on the acknowledgement that Ukraine’s NATO membership will be postponed," he said after talks with his Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orban, in Bratislava.
He reassured that Bratislava "supports Ukraine’s accession to the European Union," noting that many of those who want the Ukrainian conflict to continue would be against Ukraine’s membership in the association. As for Kiev’s potential NATO membership, the Slovak prime minister stressed that this hasty step would be a "huge risk to security" fraught with a threat of a third world war.
After a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Monday, Fico said that Turkey was ready to host peace talks and help put an end to the conflict in Ukraine. According to the Slovak prime minister, top-level peace talks should be held in an "absolutely neutral" country, which "has nothing to do with the International Criminal Court.".