Roundup: Eastern European leaders meet to strengthen strategic alliance

A meeting of presidents of Central and Eastern European countries took place in Warsaw on Tuesday. The leaders of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania joined Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski in talks about strengthening their countries' alliance as the eastern part of NATO.

The leaders arrived in Warsaw on Tuesday at the invitation of Komorowski to discuss the upcoming NATO's summit in Wales in September as well as the recent events in Ukraine.

Talking about the recent catastrophe of Malaysian Airlines aircraft shot down in Eastern Ukraine, Komorowski underlined that "(the tragedy) should mobilize us toward more effective work to ensure the safety of us and all the other members of the EU and NATO", according to reports of local media.

Komorowski also condemned the "military actions aimed at civilian population" and expressed the common belief of all the presidents attending, that "the disaster of the aircraft should be explained by an international commission with the participation of all the countries involved."

"This dramatic case shows how dangerous are the effects of actions, where politics and economic pressure also include armed violence, aggression of a military type, which is challenging the boundaries and integrity of the country ... It is a new challenge to which we must answer within the framework of NATO," he added.

Komorowski and other participants of the meeting agreed that the North Atlantic Alliance remains the most important pillar of Euro-Atlantic security and that it should take steps to adjust to the changing security conditions and security environment.

All of the leaders called for the "strategic reinforcement of the eastern flank of the Alliance." The Polish president said a part of this process should be a visible increase of NATO forces presence in Central and Eastern Europe.

Another issue underlined by Komorowski was that the North Atlantic Treaty should be fully sovereign in their decisions and "cannot take into account criteria other than the sense of security of the Member States." Endi