BUCHAREST, Sep 02, 2008 (Xinhua via COMTEX News Network) -- It is very important that NATO and the European Union remain Romania's top priorities, President Traian Basescu told Romanian diplomats here on Tuesday. 

"Romania ensures its security by being in NATO, because we cannot talk about development without having security ensured first, and Romania's presence in the EU allows us to talk first of all about the country's integration with a modern and highly performing economic system that starts bearing fruit in the everyday life of Romanians," Basescu told ambassadors and consuls attending the ongoing annual meeting here at a reception at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace. 

He added that besides being a full NATO member meeting all its pledges, Romania's bilateral relationship with the United States stays within a strategic partnership that has been established and consolidated at all times, and the foreign policy objective of continuing to consolidate the bilateral relationship with the United States within NATO remains an axis of major importance of the Romanian diplomacy. 

The Romanian head of state pointed out that fund absorption is the moment's commandment for Romania in the EU. 

The two-day meeting, which started on Tuesday, is under the theme "An expanding economy, a dynamic diplomacy."