The United States would like to extend its agreement with Kyrgyzstan on the use of Manas airport for the delivery of goods to Afghanistan after 2014, CA-NEWS reports. However, Washington does not exclude the possibility that it will have to look for another hub in one of the neighbouring countries, assistant U.S. Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday, ITAR-TASS reported. READ MORE

Twenty years ago, in July 1992, NATO started taking on a limited crisis-management role in support of international efforts to end the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Within a few years, the Alliance was called upon to play a more robust role: it deployed its first ever peace-support operation to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 and later intervened to end the crisis in Kosovo in 1999. NATO’s involvement in stabilising the Western Balkans has played a key role in the transformation of the Alliance after the end of the Cold War. READ MORE

On 26 June the Lithuanian Seimas approved draft National Security Strategy. “This is a much more realistic Strategy: the evaluation of Lithuania’s security environment in the current Strategy is rather “euphoric”, whereas in the new draft this evaluation is more careful", said Rasa Juknevičienė, the minister of national defense while presenting a draft Strategy to the Seimas. READ MORE