KIEV, June 8. /TASS/. Ukraine has launched an intense effort in the defense and security sphere to meet the standards of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the country’s Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin said on Monday.

"We have begun a very concentrated effort so that our sector of security and defence achieves NATO standards," Klimkin told a meeting of Ukraine-NATO inter-parliamentary council, stressing that "our work will be aimed for that."

"In order to get a consensus on NATO, we need to go ahead on the path of reforms," Klimkin added. Ukraine has been given a chance to meet the criteria of NATO and "we should use it."

"Now building cooperation with NATO is absolutely critical for us in the sphere of developing defence capacity and security of the country," Ukraine’s top diplomat said.

The Ukrainian parliament’s first deputy speaker, Andrey Parubiy, who co-chairs Ukraine-NATO inter-parliamentary council, said earlier Kiev’s goal was to join the North-Atlantic Alliance.