The next NATO summit will take place at the beginning of 2008, but the alliance will decide on who will become a new member this year. The candidate countries should look at the calender and see what more they have to do, Fried told VOA ahead of a Balkan tour.
Asked how the US government saw Croatia's preparedness for NATO entry, Fried said: Croatia has made tremendous progress, it confronted its past by arresting war crimes suspect Ante Gotovina, and the reforms that are being implemented are impressive. There's more to be done, but the progress is impressive and President George W. Bush has recognised what has been done.
During Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader's visit to the White House in October 2006 and at the NATO summit in Riga in November, President Bush called for extending a membership invitation to Croatia in 2008.
Fried said that the US government wanted a broad national consensus on NATO membership in each candidate country, citing the case of Poland. He said that the next expansion round would be in 2008.
The US House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee adopted a resolution on Tuesday, supporting a new round of NATO expansion and calling for the admission of Adriatic Charter countries Croatia, Macedonia and Albania and the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia. The resolution provides for assistance to those countries in preparations for membership.