The elected president of the United States, Donald Trumpmet with the secretary general of the I’LL TAKE, Mark Ruttein Palm BeachFlorida, where they have held a series of conversations about NATO’s security challenges.
Rutte took advantage of the meeting – which had not been previously announced – to also meet with the congressman Mike Waltzwho was recently appointed by Trump as White House National Security Advisor, according to a NATO statement.
Sources close to the matter informed US media that the talks have focused primarily on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the defense capacity of the Alliance member states, among other issues.
During the election campaign, Trump emphasized increasing defense spending on NATO to 3 percent of GDPin addition to promising that he would end the war in just 24 hours once he took office.
This is the first meeting between Rutte and Trump since the latter emerged as the winner of the presidential elections held in early November in the United States.
NATO is responsible for the costs of the flight, since The Alliance does not have its own plane for the Secretary General’s trips and regularly uses aircraft from Member States for travel.
The NATO chief previously mentioned that he had exchanged text messages with the Republican and assured that, during his first term, when Rutte was Dutch Prime Minister, the cooperation between the two “It was positive.”
Trump, who already governed the United States between 2017 and 2021, was very critical of NATO during his first term and questioned his NATO partners. Atlantic Alliance for not allocating enough money to collective defense.
During the last election campaign, he even suggested that he would encourage Russia to do what it wanted with European countries that do not increase their defense spending and, in addition, he questioned the sending of US military aid to Ukraine.
For his part, the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmerassured this Friday the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, that the United Kingdom will establish in spring the path of defense spending towards 2.5% of GDP.
As reported Downing Street -official residence of the British Prime Minister- in a statement, both leaders held a conversation this Friday in which Starmer stressed the need for all NATO countries to “intensify their support” for collective defense and updated the progress of his Government in the strategic defense review.
In the conversation they also addressed the current situation in Ukraine, at a time of escalation of the conflict, and both Starmer and Rutte reiterated the importance of placing the country led by Volodimir Zelensky “in the strongest possible position facing winter.”
Likewise, they agreed that the recent deployment of North Korean troops in Russia only served to further underline “the indivisibility of Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security.”
(With information from Europa Press and EFE)
