President: Visit to Defence Ministry Not Symbolic, Army Important
My visit to the Defence Ministry isn't only symbolic, as the army carries out important tasks with regards to the war in Ukraine, said President Peter Pellegrini during his visit to the ministry on Wednesday.
Bratislava, July 24 (TASR) - My visit to the Defence Ministry isn't only symbolic, as the army carries out important tasks with regards to the war in Ukraine, said President Peter Pellegrini during his visit to the ministry on Wednesday.
"I would like to thank the ministry for presenting all the projects that are already at some stage of implementation. I was very pleased that the Defence Ministry and the Slovak armed forces are, of course, looking beyond the horizon," stated Pellegrini, adding that the defence of the state must be planned decades in advance.
The president asked the people of Slovakia for understanding when it comes to the fact that the state must invest considerable amounts of money in defence. According to him, Slovakia must be able to defend the country itself, and weapon systems are expensive. He claimed that citizens themselves will profit from the defence industry as well and noted that the independent defence of the state is an obligation for Slovakia stemming partly from its commitments in NATO.
Pellegrini hopes that delays in weaponry deliveries will be as short as possible. He stressed that Slovakia doesn't have a missile defence system, and so the state must seek a temporary alternative.
Defence Minister Robert Kalinak (Smer-SD) praised the president's interest in this area. "The decisive motivator for us is Article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that we must first be able to defend ourselves on our own," he said.
The minister confirmed that Slovakia has made its support for the new NATO secretary-general conditional on the launch of a rotation mechanism regarding the defence of airspace. The ministry might inform the public about the results of the negotiations on the purchase of a new missile defence system in a couple of weeks, stated Kalinak, adding that modernising the Slovak armed forces is essential. In this connection, he confirmed a higher level of interest in military service this year.
