KYIV. Sept 20 (Interfax) - Kyiv has not dropped its determination to receive a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) and wants to become a member of the alliance, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said.
"The brief answer is yes. We are moving toward NATO membership," Prystaiko said when asked a relevant question in an interview with the online publication Europeyska Pravda (European Truth).
Ukraine has not given up its intention on this path of receiving the MAP, he said. "We are prepared and haven't given it up. We have given up the rhetoric that, in our view, hindered our movement toward this MAP," Prystaiko said.
"When the reforms, standardization, the improvement of interoperability and so on make us interesting to the alliance, we'll say: 'We still want to be in NATO. If you think the MAP is needed for that, we are prepared for the MAP, and we are prepared enough to implement it quickly," he said.
Asked when this could be possible, Prystaiko said: "As soon as our government bodies apply the necessary number of standards and we become interoperable with NATO."