US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pressed NATO allies Friday to ramp up military spending and denounced Russia’s “ongoing hostility and occupation” of Ukraine as the Trump administration toughened its tone toward Moscow.
Tillerson delivered the message as he met fellow NATO foreign ministers for the first time ahead of a May 25 summit to be attended by leaders of the 28-nation alliance, including President Donald Trump.
“As President Trump has made clear, it is no longer sustainable for the US to maintain a disproportionate share of NATO’s defence expenditures,” Tillerson said in Brussels.
He urged his fellow foreign ministers to agree at the May summit to produce plans by the end of the year to meet the spending pledge.
NATO countries originally agreed at a summit in Wales in 2014 to contribute the equivalent of two percent of their gross domestic product to defence.
Seeking to draw a line under the funding row, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said NATO members understood they had to boost spending not so much to please Washington but to counter new threats from both the east and the south.
“One option we are examining is national plans to deliver on the commitments we have made,” Stoltenberg told a press conference ending five hours of talks.
The former Norwegian premier set the tone early when he dismissed anew fears that Trump was less committed to the transatlantic alliance than his predecessors, citing words of support and increased US troop deployments in eastern Europe.
Tillerson’s remarks, reinforced later by those from Defence Secretary Jim Mattis in London, were tougher on Russia than those previously made by Trump or his cabinet officials.
Trump had stressed the need to improve US relations with Moscow after they had sunk to a low under president Barack Obama over the crisis in Ukraine.
Tillerson told the alliance’s forum with Ukraine co-chaired by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin that “American and NATO support for Ukraine remains steadfast” in the wake of “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine” three years ago when it annexed Crimea.
“Today, Russia’s ongoing hostility and occupation is compromising our shared vision of a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace,” Tillerson said.
He vowed that the US administraiton will keep sanctions in place until Russia reverses the actions that triggered them and oppose any further bid by Russia to redraw Ukraine’s borders.
He also pressed Russia to fulfill its obligations under the Minsk agreements to end the war in eastern Ukraine, where he said “Russian-led separatist forces” are fighting Ukrainian government forces. – AFP
