The lobbying campaign, held under the slogan "Together towards NATO", is not directed only at Brussels and Washington, but also at the public, notably in Croatia.
"We want to tell the public what NATO is and what NATO membership will bring us," IMO director Mladen Stanicic said. There are many misconceptions about NATO, such as that NATO is engaged in Iraq, Stanicic said.
Support for NATO in Macedonia and Albania is very high, around 80%, while in Croatia it is 43%, said Davor Bozinovic, ambassador and head of the Croatian Mission at NATO.
"Support for NATO is 43%, while 31% of citizens are against Croatia joining NATO. We are recording an increase in support because Croatia wants to share the values guaranteed by NATO, such as security and stability, human rights, and market economy," said Bozinovic, citing results of last year's polls.
The national coordinator for NATO at the Croatian Foreign Affairs and European Integration Ministry, Pjer Simunovic, said that the public should be provided with reliable information on NATO so that public support for NATO membership could be increased and maintained.
Simunovic said that the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest would adopt important decisions regarding NATO enlargement and that Croatia was fully focused on receiving a membership invitation.
"With all the reforms implemented so far, we are to a certain extent already functioning as a NATO country," he added.
Sotiraq Hroni of the Albanian institute and Aleksandar Matovski of FORUM said that although support for NATO in their respective countries was unquestionable, the goal of the Civil Alliance 08 was to mobilise public opinion.
The Civil Alliance 08 started its activities with regional meetings in Tirana and Skoplje. It aims to support and coordinate, as a noninstitutional dimension of the Adriatic Charter and in cooperation with governments, and national and international organisations, civil society actions in the region. Each party has committed to coordinating nationally the "Action Framework", a long-term campaign to monitor and promote the basic principles of Euro-Atlantic integration processes, such as stronger democratic values, fight against corruption and organised crime, transformation of the security sector, and promotion of good neighbourly relations and regional cooperation.
The Zagreb meeting was interrupted briefly by a group of young people joined in the initiative "We Don't Want NATO". After distributing leaflets and pasting up posters with anti-NATO messages, they left the venue of the meeting.