ROMANIA-NATO-20 YEARS/AFT Sibiu's Adrian Teodorescu: Every day, as a NATO serviceman, you make progress

"I can say that every day, as a serviceman in NATO, you are making progress, because you are not alone, you have partners on the left and right from whom you can learn, who help you, who support you. All the professional training of the officers of the Romanian Army or my professional training after the moment of accession is related to NATO, it is related to the operations in which I participated, it is related to international missions, it is related to the forms of training in which NATO had a determining role", Adrian Teodorescu told AGERPRES.

One of the most experienced people from the Military Academy in Sibiu, Adrian Teodorescu teaches his students how to overcome their fears.

"I tell the students that fear is the most important part of courage. (...) When you say I'm not afraid of something, you should stop," says Adrian Teodorescu.

He is of the opinion that the Romanian Army has many benefits as a NATO member.

"I expect Romania to truly accept, in all terms of military and political decisions, the challenge offered by NATO. To understand that our path is inseparable, that they have so much to offer, and we have so much to receive from NATO in terms of preparation, modernization, mentality, development, basically I have only positive expectations from NATO regarding the Romanian Army," Adrian Teodorescu pointed out.

The head of the Military Training Center of the Nicolae Balcescu Land Forces Academy in Sibiu is firmly convinced that his participation in international NATO missions helped him improve.

"Our participation in international missions under the auspices of NATO together with other partners (...) practically there I was the closest to what it means to be an officer in the true sense of the word," underlined Adrian Teodorescu.

With an experience of 36 years in the Romanian Army, Colonel Adrian Teodorescu admits that he evolved together with Romania in NATO.

"The revolution caught me in the military high school, and my first job - as an officer - caught me in Arad, at that time I was a Russian speaker and I remember the first Romanian-Hungarian exercise, which led me to opt for the advanced language courses English. And destiny did as in the wave (...) in which the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary joined on March 12, 1999 - it left us very frustrated, knowing very clearly that, in a way, maybe it was our right or the merit of an army that worked very hard for the moment of March 12, 1999 to join NATO. I made defeat a pleasure, at least on a personal level. I perfected my English and the moment of April 2, 2004 found me in the position of company commander infantry in the province of Kosovo, in a very important NATO mission, which happened after the moment of March 11-18, 2004, when the violence in Kosovo broke out again, violence without precedent. (...) So that moment of accession caught us in a NATO mission. (...) In truth, our place was fully among the other partners, in the present case, then the Italian, French, Belgian, American military, who were already in NATO", recalls Adrian Teodorescu.

(Fluierul)